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What Think You 
of Christ? 









AN 

HISTORICAL INQUIRY INTO CHRIST'S 

GODHEAD. 



BY 

BERNARD J. OTTEN, S. J. 

Professor of Theology in St. Louis University. 



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ST. LOUIS, MO., 1909 

Published by B. Herder 
17 South Broadway 



FREIBURG (BADEN) 

B. HERDER 



LONDON & EDINBURGH 
SANDS & CO. 



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Book_ 

Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



What Think You 
of Christ? 



AN 

HISTORICAL INQUIRY INTO CHRIST'S 

GODHEAD. 



BY 

BERNARD J. OTTEN, S. J. 

Professor of Theology in St. Louis University. 



ST. LOUIS, MO., 1909 

Published by B. Herder 
17 South Broadway 

FREIBURG (BADEN) LONDON & EDINBURGH 

B. HERDER SANDS & CO. 



Die6Julii, 1909. 



Nihil obstat. 



.<Dl 



R. J. Meyer, S. J. 

Provincial. 



Nihil obstat. 

St. Louis, die 12 Julii, 1909. 
Josephus Wentker, 

Censor. 



Imprimatur. 
St. Louis, die 12 Julii, 1909. 



t Joannes J. Glennon, 
Archiepiscopus. 



Copyright, 1909, by Joseph Gummersbach. 



a a 248059 
SEP 27 1909 



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CONTENTS 



What Think You of Christ ? 1 

The Christ of the Synoptics 22 

The Christ of St. Paul 50 

The Word Incarnate 73 

Historic Basis of St. John's Faith 96 

The Christ of the Early Church 120 

Christ the Light of the World. 142 



PREFACE. 

The purpose of this little treatise is to 
place before believing Christians, both 
Catholics and Protestants, the chief histori- 
cal reasons which underlie our faith in 
Christ's Godhead. The Rationalistic ten- 
dencies of the day, especially as disguised 
under the garb of Modernism, seem to need 
a counterpoise even in the minds of such as 
stand in no immediate danger of being led 
astray by recent speculations concerning 
the personality of our Blessed Saviour. 
Specious argumentation and bold state- 
ments, if oft repeated and put forward in a 
plausible way, are calculated to exert an 
influence even where faith is strong, and 
unless this influence be counteracted in due 
time, more harm may come of it than well- 
meaning but over-trustful persons are 
likely to suspect. 

It is to this thought that the discussions 
in the present treatise owe their somewhat 
unusual form. To the believing Christian the 
Divinity of Christ may be proved much 
more effectively by emphasizing the super- 
natural element in His earthly career, but 
as that element is summarily set aside by 



ii Preface 

the adversaries with whom we have to deal, 
it has lost much of its value as a weapon 
of defense in the present controversy. 
Hence, as the reader will notice, in the fol- 
lowing pages little or nothing is said about 
miracles or other supernatural manifesta- 
tions; but the whole argumentation turns 
about certain points of history, which Mod- 
ernists and Rationalists alike deem of prime 
importance in deciding the point at issue. 
The reason for this, as already intimated, 
is not to be looked for in the writer's own 
view of the matter, but rather in the posi- 
tion taken by the men whose influence this 
little treatise is intended to counteract. 
They have chosen the weapons, and if we 
wish to oppose them successfully, we must 
use weapons of a like kind. 

In reality, therefore, the following pages 
contain an answer to the various Ration- 
alistic contentions, whose one aim is to re- 
duce Christ to the level of a purely human 
being. However, in order to keep the dis- 
cussion within reasonable limits, the polem- 
ical element has been relegated more or 
less to the back-ground, only such passing 
references being made to our adversaries' 
views as were deemed necessary to give 
point to the arguments or to put the ques- 
tion under discussion in a clearer light. 
Possibly this may be regarded as a defect, 



Preface hi 

but if so, it is the writer's opinion that de- 
fects of this kind are more than counter- 
balanced by the resulting unity, which the 
elimination of all formal controversy has 
made possible. 



What Think You of Christ? 

In the twenty-second chapter of his Gos- 
pel, St. Matthew relates how on a certain 
occasion the Pharisees gathered around our 
Blessed Saviour for the purpose of ensnar- 
ing Him in His speech, so that they might 
have cause to accuse Him before the mag- 
istrates. One of them, a doctor of the law, 
asked Him the question: "Master, which 
is the great commandment of the law?'' 
Jesus answered: "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and 
with thy whole soul, and with thy whole 
mind. This is the greatest and the first 
commandment. And the second is like to 
this : Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
self. On these two commandments de- 
pendeth the whole law and the prophets" 
(35-40). The first part of this answer was 
but a statement of the law promulgated by 
Moses, as recorded in Deuteronomy (VI, 
5) ; but the second part, at least in the sense 
in which it was taken by our Blessed Sav- 
iour, was a new commandment, which He 
imposed upon all by His own supreme au- 
thority. For of old it had been said : "Thou 
shalt love thy friend as thyself (Lev. XIX, 



2 What Think You of Christ? 

18), thus tacitly excluding enemies and 
strangers from the law of neighbourly love ; 
but Christ broadened out this law so as to 
make it comprise all men without distinc- 
tion, even such as had given cause for 
enmity. In this He but reiterated His 
teaching on a former occasion, when He 
said: "You have heard that it hath been 
said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and 
hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love 
your enemies ; do good to them that hate 
you; and pray for them that persecute and 
calumniate you : that you may be the child- 
ren of your Father who is in heaven, who 
maketh his sun to rise upon the good and 
the bad, and raineth upon the just and the 
unjust" (Matt. V. 43-45). It was therefore 
a new commandment, and as such it postu- 
lated in Him supreme legislative authority. 
Having thus called the attention of His 
hearers to His singular position in regard 
to the law, He asked them in return: 
"What think you of Christ? whose son is 
he? They say to him: David's. He saith 
to them: How then doth David in spirit 
call him Lord, saying: The Lord said 
to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, 
until I make thy enemies thy footstool? 
If David then call him Lord how is he his 
son? And no man was able to answer him 
a word, neither durst any man from that 



What Think You of Christ? 3 

day forth ask him any more questions" 
Matt. XXII, 42-46). Christ thus offered 
His adversaries an opportunity to acknowl- 
edge the divine personality of the prom- 
ised Messiah, whom they all understood to 
be David's son, although David had called 
Him Lord, and had represented Him as sit- 
ting on the throne of God. Had they been 
of good will and sincere purpose, they could 
hardly have failed to answer Christ's sec- 
ond question as readily as the first. "If 
then David call him Lord, how is he his 
son? ,, Why, He is David's son, because 
according to the flesh He is to be a des- 
cendant of the house of David; and David 
calls Him Lord, because according to His 
higher nature He is to be the Son of God, 
being "over all things God blessed for- 
ever." It was because they had allowed 
themselves to be blinded by worldly 
ambition that they failed to perceive the 
true import of the prophecies recorded in 
their Sacred Books, and thus blinded they 
saw no way out of the difficulty, so that 
their only answer was an incredulous 
silence. 

Now this question of our Blessed Sav- 
iour, "What think you of Christ ?" I 
would like to ask you, Christian men and 
women, who, it may be reasonably sup- 
posed, are deeply interested in all that con- 



4 What Think You of Christ? 

cerns His personality. What think you of 
Christ? What think you of Him, not as 
Christians, not as His faithful disciples ; but 
merely as reasonable men and women, who 
have impartially weighed the evidence put 
forth in His behalf? Do you believe, as 
did the Pharisees of old, that He is but 
David's son? or do you admit the further 
statement that he is also David's Lord? that 
He is the Son of God — a God Incarnate? 

Christ has stood before the world as 
God's own Son, consubstantial with the 
Father, ever since He rose in triumph 
from the grave. His divine Sonship has 
been the leaven that changed corrupt hu- 
manity in its inmost being. The effulgence 
of His Godhead purified the corruption of 
pagan Greece and Rome, and slowly but 
surely gathered around the altar of the 
Cross the noblest and the best of every 
nation on the face of the earth. If the 
greater part of the civilized world is 
Christian today, it is because the Christ 
that was preached by the Apostles and 
their successors presented Himself not as a 
mere man, but as the one true God, before 
whom every knee must bend in humble 
adoration. In the days of old, during His 
earthly pilgrimage, He proved His divinity 
by calling the dead from their graves, and 
sending the stream of life through limbs 



What Think You of Christ? 5 

that had long since been wasted by dis- 
ease ; later on when He had been raised 
on high, He wrought in the full light of 
day, in the sight of all the people, the far 
more stupendous miracle of calling into 
life entire nations, who had sat for ages in 
the darkness of sin and in the shadows of 
spiritual death. It is to His Godhead, and 
not to His humanity, that the world owes 
all that is noblest and best in Christian 
civilization. And yet in spite of all this, 
in spite of the most convincing proofs that 
Christ is in very deed the Son of the Most 
High, men shrink from professing Him to 
be their God and content themselves like 
the Jews of old, with calling Him a great 
prophet. 

It is a sad fact that the number of those 
who repudiate Christ's title to a strictly 
divine sonship is increasing day by day. 
Their ranks are augmented not only from 
the different Protestant denominations, 
but also from the Church that has always 
stood in the forefront of our Blessed Sav- 
iour's defenders against the attacks of 
Rationalism. Men's highest ambition, as 
exemplified in much that goes by the name 
of modern scholarship, reaches out to a po- 
sition of intellectual independence, that will 
not brook in the world of phenomena, 
the presence of a being, whose perfections 



6 What Think You of Christ? 

cannot be measured by human standards of 
excellence. That childlike attitude of heart 
and mind, which receives without ques- 
tioning God's revelation to man, is fast 
making room for a critical incredulity, 
which in the end must lead to absolute skep- 
ticism in matters of faith. It is a position 
as false in principle as it is unreasonable in 
fact. A careful sifting of the evidence, 
which show r s the reasonableness of faith in 
Christ's divinity, is indeed quite legiti- 
mate : — nay, it is even necessary in order 
to render God a reasonable service ; but to 
reject this evidence, when it is found to 
square with all the canons of sound criti- 
cism, is as uncritical as it is un-Christian. 
Yet this is the common practice of an ever 
growing multitude of modern scholars, who 
point to themselves as leaders of Christian 
thought, and who glory in the claim that 
they have succeeded in placing Christianity 
upon a scientific basis. Objective evidence 
points indeed with unmistakable clearness 
to Christ's divine personality; but because 
the personal union of the human and the 
divine cannot be fathomed by human in- 
telligence, hence the evidence itself must 
be explained away. That this procedure 
is most illogical, no one can fail to see : be- 
cause in the last instance it transfers the 
limitations of the human intellect to the 



What Think You of Christ? 7 

very being of God, who is supposed to be 
incapable of accomplishing what man's 
reason cannot understand. It is a manifes- 
tation of intellectual pride that is of its 
very nature irreconcilable with the spirit 
of faith ; and hence it is no wonder that 
such men should content themselves with 
acknowledging in Christ but a mere man, 
even though Christianity has always adored 
Him as its God. 

It is this spirit of uncritical criticism 
that the Supreme Pontiff has lately con- 
demned in his Encyclical against Modern- 
ism. The secular, and to some extent also 
the non-Catholic religious press has been 
loud in condemning that famous document 
as another evidence of Rome's traditional 
opposition to all progress ; but to the 
thoughtful and Christian mind, whether 
Catholic or Protestant, it has brought a 
much needed reassurance in the conflict 
with error and falsehood, which threaten 
to exile Christ from the world redeemed 
by the outpouring of His blood. No censure 
has been passed upon modern learning, 
simply because it is modern or progressive ; 
on the contrary, in so far as it is sound and 
sincere, it has been duly appreciated and 
highly praised : nor yet have modern meth- 
ods been condemned indiscriminately, for 
in many respects these methods are ac- 



8 What Think You of Christ? 

knowledged to yield excellent results, and 
they are in fact extensively used by the 
foremost champions of the faith; but what 
has been made an object of censure and 
what has been condemned in the strongest 
terms, are the unwarranted assumptions 
that many modern critics put forward as 
so many well established axioms which, 
according to them, admit of no discussion, 
and which, if logically applied, must neces- 
sarily lead to the subversion of all his- 
toric truth. To assume without proof that 
we cannot be certain 'of anything that lies 
beyond the ken of our senses and then to 
use that assumption as an argument 
against the historical foundation of the 
Christian faith, is not the outcome of learn- 
ing and scholarship, but the result of deep- 
rooted prejudice against the supernatural :— 
it is intellectual suicide ; and as such it is 
deserving of the most unqualified condem- 
nation. Yet this is the sum and substance 
of Modernism and this is the chief reason 
why it has been condemned by the Sover- 
eign Pontiff. Modernists take it for granted 
that, aside from each one's individual con- 
sciousness, we cannot prove Christ's 
divine personality; they take it for granted 
that we cannot prove the fact of revelation; 
they take it for granted that we cannot 
prove the establishment of the Church and 



What Think You of Christ? 9 

the institution of the Sacraments: — and 
after assuming all this without proof, after 
simply taking it for granted, they coolly 
demand that historic Christianity be dis- 
carded as something that has outlived its 
usefulness, and that henceforth each one be 
his own prophet and counselor, following 
as best he may the example of the Man 
Christ w T hose human life and work point 
the way to union w T ith God. Surely, if 
such doctrines may go uncensured, if such 
teaching may stand uncondemned, Chris- 
tianity has ceased to exist, and human rea- 
son itself has signed its own death warrant. 
It is true, these men claim to be loyal 
Catholics; they profess the greatest rever- 
ence for Christ and express the highest ap- 
preciation of His work : but it must not be 
overlooked that their Catholicism is of their 
own invention, and that the Christ, whom 
they profess to revere and follow, is the 
very antithesis of the Christ preached by 
the Apostles and the first disciples. The 
Catholic Church, as they conceive it, is a 
pure democracy, in which all final author- 
ity resides in the individual conscience, and 
not in a supreme ruler who holds the place 
of Christ. Hence in matters of faith, the 
court of final appeal is each one's private 
judgment, which should indeed be in har- 
mony with the mind of the Church, but 



10 What Think You of Christ? 

with which no Ecclesiastical authority has 
a right to interfere. They are willing to 
admit a teaching authority, but only in so 
far as that authority voices the opinion of 
individual Church members and acknowl- 
edges its dependence upon popular ideals. 
A loyal Catholic therefore, as they under- 
stand and use the term, is one who pro- 
fesses at all times a profound respect for 
authority, but who knows so to interpret 
that authority as to be able to follow with- 
out hindrance his own judgment. This is 
Protestantism pure and simple, except that 
it tries to hide its interior opposition to 
authority under the thin guise of exterior 
submission. 

Equally un-Catholic is their view of 
Christ. They do not openly and absolutely 
deny His divinity, as do their Rationalis- 
tic prototypes, but they contend that His 
divine personality cannot be proved from 
any historical data. If in His action upon 
the human soul He manifests Himself as 
divine. His Godhead becomes an object of 
faith to the particular individual in ques- 
tion ; but in as far as He is an historical 
personage. He is merely human. Science 
and history, they say, encounter nothing 
in Him that is not contained within the 
range of purely human perfection. Hence 
they distinguish between the Christ of faith 



What Think You of Christ? 11 

and the Christ of history. The former is 
indeed divine, because He is experienced 
as such by the religious consciousness of 
His followers ; the latter is merely human, 
because science and history can accept 
only what falls under the observation of 
the senses and as such is circumscribed by 
finite limits. Consequentlv the Christ that 
is presented to us in historical records, 
when stripped of all that faith has attrib- 
uted to Him, is different from other 
mortals only in the more striking perfec- 
tion of His character and in His closer 
union with God. As these Modernists put 
it, "He was a man of choicest nature, 
w r hose like has never been, nor ever will 
be." 

It would be timely indeed to subject 
these various contentions of Modernists 
to a close study, so that their unwarranted 
assumptions and glaring contradictions 
might be placed in their true light; but as 
that would lead us over the entire field of 
philosophy and theology, and consequently 
would be too vast a subject to be ade- 
quately treated in a few chapters, it seems 
more profitable to confine our attention to 
one point which, if not the most funda- 
mental, is certainly the most pernicious 
error of their entire system. This is their 
teaching concerning Christ, as just now 



12 What Think You of Christ? 

explained. It does not, however, seem 
advisable to treat the matter from a strictly 
polemical or controversial standpoint, but 
rather to take the available data at their 
own merit; because the best refutation of 
error is always contained in a clear pre- 
sentation of the truth. Hence in the fol- 
lowing pa^es we shall endeavor to answer 
our Lord's question, "What think you of 
Christ?" as guided by the light of histori- 
cal evidence, without allowing ourselves to 
be influenced by that mysterious religious 
sense to which Modernists attribute the 
time-honored belief in Christ's divinity. 

As is quite manifest, most of the evi- 
dence upon which we must rely in formu- 
lating our answer to Modernists, is con- 
tained in the New Testament, which 
records Christ's deeds and sayings as wit- 
nessed by His disciples during His sojourn 
upon earth. Modernists tell us indeed that 
the New Testament, in as far as it con- 
tains real history, has nothing to say in 
favor of Christ's divinity; but whether that 
contention be true or false, we shall have 
abundant occasion to learn in the course of 
these discussions. And here it is well to 
bear in mind that there is no need what- 
ever of first proving the historical value of 
these New Testament writings ; for in prac- 
tice Modernists, and Rationalists as well, 



What Think You of Christ? 13 

admit this, in as much as they freely use 
these same writings as a source of informa- 
tion concerning the personality of Christ. 
It is true, they reject whatever might be 
used as an argument to prove His divinity ; 
but as we shall see, the divinity of Christ 
is so interwoven with the whole narrative 
that it can in no wise be set aside, except 
by sacrifi ing the entire New Testament, 
which even the most radical critics are un- 
willing to do. 

On this point it might be well to give 
the view of a modern writer who is not a 
Catholic, and w r ho has carefully weighed 
all the evidence advanced by the most 
hostile critics against the trustworthiness 
of the Gospel narrative. In an article on 
the character of Christ, as represented in 
the four Gospels, he says: "For the study 
in which we are to be engaged two 
positions are essential, which may be 
stated here as assumptions, though they 
are in reality conclusions of the study 
itself. The first is the trustworthiness of 
the Gospels as portraitures of Christ. 
Grant the ordinary critical results, that the 
Gospels were written late in the first 
century, that contemporary ideas and ex- 
periences have influenced their authors or 
editors, that in some cases the Evangelists 
have misunderstood or misrepresented their 



14 What Think You of Christ? 

Master ; yet the fact remains, that the char- 
acter of . Christ, as represented in these 
documents, was not, and could not have 
been an invention or a fiction, a product 
of progressive meditation or a creation of 
enthusiastic feeling. Do justice to the por- 
trait of Christ, let its harmony and unique- 
ness, its profound naturalness and its 
transcendent loveliness, make their due im- 
pression, and the conclusion presses, that 
the Christ of the Gospels is not a construc- 
tion but a memory, an actual figure, once 
beheld by eyes of flesh, and now discerned 
through a medium upon which contempo- 
rary influences have had no distorting effect, 
and which, accordingly permits Him to be 
known as He was." 

"The second assumption follows naturally 
upon the first, and maintains the sufficiency 
of the Gospels for the knowledge of Christ. 
It is obvious that they do not aim at ex- 
tensive completeness. They are not chron- 
icles; nor are they biographies in the mod- 
ern sense. A shorthand report of the say- 
ings of Jesus, a minute record of His life, 
during even the short period covered by the 
narratives, would have swelled their brief 
outlines to portentous volumes. It is cer- 
tain that they do aim at intensive or central 
completeness. We do not need to know 
everything about a man in order to know 



What Think You of Christ? 15 

him. For the purpose of character study, 
much that is interesting, that affectionate 
curiosity would like to know, is needless 
or irrelevant. The materials of our study 
must be, and need only be, such words and 
deeds as express the whole man, and are 
the organic utterance and outcome of his 
very self. This is one aspect of the unique- 
ness of the Gospels, one element in the 
proof that they are memorials, not inven- 
tions, that the Christ they represent is a 
unity. There is not the faintest trace of 
artificiality, of an ingenious synthesis of 
heterogeneous elements. No portrait paint- 
er, no artist in words, ever invented a fig- 
ure of such perfect harmony. There are 
many things about Christ we should like to 
know ; but such things have been told as 
enable us to know Christ. From the Gos- 
pels we learn enough to know what man- 
ner of man He was. And if He be alive 
and able to influence persons now living on 
this earth, it is certain that His communica- 
tions will be simply the unfolding and the 
application of the character which was ex- 
pressed in such words and deeds as the 
Gospels record" (Kilpatrick, Character of 
Christ, D. C. G. I, p. 282). 

In this view of the matter there are some 
things to which I would not care to sub 
scribe: as, for instance, the contention thai 



16 What Think You of Christ? 

the "Gospels were written late in the first 
century/' that ''contemporary ideas and ex- 
periences have influenced their authors or 
editors," and that "in some cases the Evan- 
gelists have misunderstood or misinter- 
preted their Master ;" but waiving all this 
for the present, the undoubted fact remains 
that even such critics as are unwilling to 
admit Christ's divine personality, or for that 
matter anything that savors of the super- 
natural, must and do admit that the Gospels 
contain a correct historical portraiture of 
Christ. This is all we need : for as already 
stated, our arguments and conclusions will 
not be based upon isolated passages, which 
might possibly be called in question, but 
upon the entire Gospel narrative. If the 
Gospels can at all be considered as histori- 
cal documents, then the incarnation of the 
Son of God must be admitted as an his- 
toric fact : then it is historically certain that 
Christ was God. 

Xor must it be imagined that the conclu- 
sion, which I have quoted at some length, 
is that of a particular individual, who is 
more or less favorably disposed towards the 
orthodox teaching concerning Christ's di- 
vine personality ; in its broad outlines it is 
freely conceded even by the most advanced 
critics. Leaving aside the question of His 
divinity, they are all most eloquent in their 



What Think You of Christ? 17 

eulogies of the historic Christ, whose un- 
equalled character they find delineated in 
the Gospel narrative. It never enters their 
minds to question the trustworthiness of 
the Gospels, when the point at issue is 
limited to Christ's human perfection. They 
become skeptical only where the Evangel- 
ists record such w r ords or deeds as neces- 
sarily imply that Christ was a divine per- 
son. Then they apply the arbitrarily es- 
tablished canon of higher criticism, accord- 
ing to which nothing must be admitted as 
historical, except it be contained within the 
limits of the purely natural. This is indeed 
quite an absurd proceeding; but it is the 
only way open to them. As the infidel 
Renan well put it: "If miracles and revela- 
tion be possible, then our position is ex- 
tremely foolish. For in that case the divin- 
ity of Christ is so well attested, that only 
a fool could ever dream of denying it." 
Hence they hold fast to their fundamental 
principle, that within the borders of Na- 
ture's kingdom there is no room for the 
supernatural — there is no room for God. 
God's place is in heaven, and there He must 
stay, whatever Prophets and Evangelists 
and Theologians may say to the contrary. 
On another occasion I have shown at 
considerable length, how this summary re- 
jection of all that is supernatural, whether it 



18 What Think You of Christ? 

be miracles or revelation, is directly oppos- 
ed to sound reason. It is not necessary to 
repeat these arguments now, as in the fol- 
lowing discussions we shall not base our 
reasoning upon any miraculous occurrences 
narrated in the Gospels. Still, it is but right 
to bear in mind that the possibility of super- 
natural manifestations is based upon solid 
proof. Whoever admits the fact of creation, 
and no one not hopelessly prejudiced can 
possibly escape such an admission, must 
also admit that God can manifest Himself 
according to His own good pleasure in the 
world which He has called into existence. 
If God created the world, as He most cer- 
tainly did, and if He established the laws by 
which that world is governed, as follows 
necessarily from the fact of creation, it is 
clearer than the light of day that He can 
produce effects in that world which tran- 
scend nature's powers, and which for that 
reason are justly called supernatural. Hence 
when such effects are recorded by trust- 
worthy witnesses, they are as deserving of 
credit as are the purely natural facts re- 
corded by the same witnesses. To receive 
the one and to reject the other, is not a 
sign of critical acumen, but only a mani- 
festation of unreasonable prejudice. 

Consequently the fact that so many mod- 
ern critics, who are fully acquainted with 



What Think You of Christ? 19 

the contents of the Sacred Books, persist- 
ently deny Christ's divinity, need cause no . 
anxiety whatever. Their point of departure 
from the received Christian view is not to 
be looked for in the Bible, but in the false 
philosophic systems in which they have 
been trained, and which have so biased their 
minds against all that lies beyond the w r orld 
of phenomena, that they cannot perceive 
the truth even though it appear before them 
in noonday brightness. It is well to bear in 
mind that other critics, equally as well versed 
in the Sacred Writings, admit without hesi- 
tation that the Evangelists testify in no un- 
certain terms to the divinity of Christ, and 
that their testimony is undoubtedly true. 
Catholic and non-Catholic scholars alike 
have sifted the evidence with the greatest 
care ; they have duly weighed all the dif- 
ficulties brought to bear upon their posi- 
tion; yet the more they study the point at 
issue, and the more they consider their op- 
ponents' arguments, the more firmly they 
become convinced that Christ is in very 
truth the Son of God. It is not therefore 
a contest between educated unbelief and un- 
educated faith, as we are sometimes told by 
the advocates of modern Rationalism ; but 
a contest between ingrained prejudice and 
open-minded sincerity, between the self-suf- 
ficiency of fallen nature and the recognized 



20 What Think You of Christ? 

limitations of all created intelligence. Faith 
is a gift of God, and that gift is not be- 
stowed except where the heart is empty of 
self. In this connection it is well to recall 
the significant words of Christ : "I confess 
to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
because thou hast hidden these things from 
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
them to little ones. Yea, Father; for so 
hath it seemed good in thy sight" (Matth. 
XI, 25). In order to believe, we must be- 
come like the little ones, whose unprejudiced 
minds are ever open to the light of truth, 
and whose uncorrupted hearts respond in- 
stinctively to the touch of divine love. 

With this, therefore, we are prepared to 
begin our investigation, which will show 
us indeed that Christ is the very ideal of 
perfect manhood, as Rationalists and Mod- 
ernists never tire of presenting Him to their 
followers ; but it will also show us that He 
is infinitely more than the highest realiza- 
tion of human perfection. If we approach 
this subject in the proper disposition of mind 
and heart: — with a mind that is free from 
materialistic bias and with a heart that is 
true to its God-given instincts, we shall 
soon realize that Christ's human nature is 
but a veil that softens, indeed, but cannot 
conceal the splendor of His divinity. His 
uncreated love, touched with human sym- 



What Think You of Christ? 21 

pathy, will lift up our hearts into a new 
world of light and beauty. We shall realize 
that His beauty is the beauty of God clothed 
in human loveliness ; that His love is the 
love of God throbbing with human interest ; 
that He is indeed flesh of our flesh, bone of 
our bone, yet true God of true God— our 
God Incarnate. 



22 



The Christ of the Synoptics 

The answer to our Lord's question, 
"What think you of Christ?" may be derived 
from one of two sources, which are. as far as 
their argumentive value is concerned, inde- 
pendent of one another. The first source is 
the record of His deeds and teaching as pre- 
served for us in the writings of the New 
Testament ; the other is the work which He 
has accomplished in the reformation of the 
world, and which remains to our own day 
such as He inaugurated it nineteen centuries 
ago. Both sources supply abundant material 
for an adequate appreciation of Christ's per- 
sonality ; for upon both oi them that person- 
ality has been engraven in characters so 
large and striking that he who runs may 
read. It is not therefore true to say, as it 
sometimes is said, that all we know about 
Christ is contained in the Bible : as long as 
Christianity remains, so long is there a living 
witness that sets forth in eloquent and con- 
vincing terms all that distinguishes Christ 
from the rest of men : — a witness that was 
sent by Christ Himself to bear testimony 
to Him until the end of time. Hence even 
if the Xew Testament had never been writ- 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 23 

ten, we should still be able to give a clear 
and definite answer to our Blessed Saviour's 
momentous question, "What think you of 
Christ ?" 

In these discussions, however, we shall 
have recourse principally to the evidence fur- 
nished by the Xew Testament writings, al- 
though in one or two instances we shall go 
somewhat beyond them and appeal to the 
work that lives after Christ. Most of the 
available evidence is contained in the Gos- 
pels, which, as you all know, are four in 
number; or as some prefer to put it, the one 
Gospel of Christ has come down to us in 
four different narratives. The first three, 
written respectively by St. Matthew, St. 
Mark, and St. Luke, are usually spoken of 
as the Synoptic Gospels, "because they are 
so constructed that, together, they present a 
synopsis or conspectus of the leading feat- 
ures of the work and teaching of our Lord." 
They have quite a large number of points in 
common, though each one records also some 
facts or sayings that are not contained in 
the other two. Partly because of the sub- 
ject matter which forms the burden of their 
narrative, and partly because of the com- 
mon type to which they belong, they are 
usually classed together and distinguished 
from that of St. John, which is generally re- 
ferred to as the Fourth Gospel. We shall 



24 What Think You of Christ? 

first consider the teaching of these Synoptic 
Gospels, with a view to determine whether 
they represent Christ as a mere man, as Ra- 
tionalists and Modernists contend, or 
whether they ascribe to Him a divine per- 
sonality as Christianity has always believed. 
At the very outset it may be freely conced- 
ed that the Synoptics do not emphasize the 
divinity of Christ in so marked a manner as 
does St. John. But the reason of this dif- 
ference is quite obvious; because the first 
three Gospels were written at an early date, 
when the one point that was of paramount 
importance in the Apostolic teaching con- 
sisted in the fact that Christ was the prom- 
ised Messiah, who had come to redeem the 
world from sin and to lead all men of good 
will to eternal salvation. Hence whatever 
deeds or sayings of Christ were calculated 
to bring out that point clearly and distinctly, 
were appropriately placed in the foreground ; 
whilst His divine personality received only 
such passing notice as was necessary to set 
forth the full sense of His Messianic char- 
acter. In this the Apostles and Evangelists 
were guided by divine Providence, which re- 
veals the highest mysteries of religion only 
by degrees, as men's hearts are prepared to 
give them due consideration. Had they 
from the very beginning placed special em- 
phasis upon Christ's divine personality, they 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 25 

might have caused the greatest confusion in 
the minds of both Jews and Gentiles. For 
whilst the Jews on account of their strictly 
monotheistic belief found it extremely diffi- 
cult to conceive of really distinct personali- 
ties in the Godhead, the Gentiles on the con- 
trary owing to their polytheism were but 
too ready to admit a multiplicity of gods ; 
and consequently any undue insistence upon 
Christ's divine sonship would at that 
early period have proved a decided hind- 
rance to t .e work of evangelizing the world. 
It was quite different when St. John wrote 
his Gospel ; for then Christ had already been 
accepted by a large following as the Saviour 
of mankind, and His supreme teaching au- 
thority was fully acknowledged. Men's 
minds were prepared to contemplate His 
divinity unobscured, as it were, by His Mes- 
sianic character. Hence he could, without 
fear of scandalizing the little ones, preface 
his Evangelic message with those sub- 
lime words: "In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God. And the Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us." It was a 
truth which all the disciples of Christ be- 
lieved, vet which had never before been 
placed in so clear a light. 

From this, however, it must not be in- 
ferred that the Synoptics represented Christ 



26 What Think You of Christ? 

as merely a human being; they placed Him 
before the world as the Son of God, as the 
Well-Beloved of the Father, as tTie Supreme 
Arbiter of men's eternal destiny, as an ob- 
ject of divine worship, and consequently as 
the God Incarnate : but this they did by im- 
plication rather than by direct statement. 
The Christ whom they portrayed in their 
narratives, and whom the Apostles and the 
disciples generally preached to the people, 
was first and foremost a Saviour, although 
they made it clearly understood that His 
saving power had its source in the Godhead, 
which He had in common with the > Father 
and the Holy Spirit. As a modern critic 
well observes : "The entire representation 
of Christ, which is given us by the Synop- 
tics, may be placed side by side with that 
given by St. John, as being altogether iden- 
tical with it. For a faith moulded in obe- 
dience to the Synoptic tradition concern- 
ing Christ, must essentially have the same 
features in its resulting conception of Christ 
as those which belong to the Christ of St. 
John." (Dorner, Person of Christ, p. 89.) 
And as another writer words it: "If the 
title of Divinity is more explicitly put for- 
ward in St. John, the rights which imply 
it are insisted on in words recorded by the 
earlier Evangelists" (Liddon, Divinity of 
our Lord, p. 255). That this is really the 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 27 

case, we shall see in the course of the pres- 
ent discussion. 

To keep the argument within reasonable 
limits, we must pass over that part of the 
Gospel narrative which treats of the birth 
and hidden life of Christ, although there is 
much contained in these chapters that places 
the Saviour from the very outset upon a 
superhuman plane. His virginal concep- 
tion effected through the power of the most 
High ; the angel's announcement that He is 
the Son of God ; holy Simeon's declara- 
tion that in Him is fulfilled Israel's Mes- 
sianic hope ; the Evangelist's account of 
His divine wisdom as manifested in His 
questions and answers during His three 
day's stay in the Temple : — all these are so 
many facts which, if they do not actually 
declare His divinity, at least form an ap- 
propriate prelude to such a declaration in 
the future. Yet all this we may omit for 
the present, relying for our proof entirely 
upon the account of Christ's public life as 
contained in the three Synoptic Gospels. 

As a first step in our argument we may 
take the Sermon on the Mount, which be- 
longs to the early part of Christ's public 
ministry, and which is recorded somewhat 
more fully by St. Matthew, and in part also 
by St. Mark and St. Luke. This sermon 
was delivered almost immediately after the 



28 What Think You of Christ? 

choosing of the twelve Apostles, whom 
Christ had destined to carry the message of 
Redemption to the most distant nations. It 
may, therefore, well be regarded as a model 
after which the Apostles were to fashion 
their future preaching. And what a model 
it is! "Sent to save what was lost," Christ 
begins His famous discourse with a bless- 
ing upon all men of good will. "And open- 
ing his mouth, " says St. Matthew, "he 
taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor 
in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven. Blessed are the meek: for they shall 
possess the land. Blessed are ihey that 
mourn : for they shall be comforted. Bles- 
sed are they that hunger and thirst after 
justice: for they shall have their fill. Bles- 
sed are the merciful : for they shall obtain 
mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart: for 
they shall see God. Blessed are the peace- 
makers : for they shall be called the chil- 
dren of God. Blessed are they that suffer 
persecution for justice' sake : for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye 
when they revile you, and persecute you, 
and speak all that is evil against you, un- 
truly, for my sake : be glad and rejoice, for 
your reward is very great in heaven" (V. 
2-12). 

What a surprise this introduction must 
have caused in the disciples and the multi- 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 29 

tude that were gathered about Him, and lis- 
tened with rapt attention to the words of 
love and mercy that flowed from His sacred 
lips ! Xo Master in Israel had ever before 
spoken such words of divine consolation. 
In the discourses of the Scribes and Phari- 
sees it was always the letter of the law that 
was emphasized, whilst the spirit was whol- 
ly ignored ; but here was a teacher who 
raised that spirit to an ' nportance that 
dominated all else. As a modern critic well 
observes : "Jesus furnishes here a universal 
ideal and a universal criterion. Not only 
did He describe the ideal in words; He also 
illustrated it in His own life. According to 
Jesus' teaching and example, a man's suc- 
cess or failure is to be judged not by 
the amount of money he can accumulate, 
or by the amount of social distinction he 
can command, or by the extent of his intel- 
lectual or official achievements ; but rather 
by the essential character which he fashions 
within himself, and the service which he 
renders his fellow-men. In the Beatitudes 
Jesus calls men away from the superficial 
tests and standards which so commonly pre- 
vail, to a criterion which concerns the real 
nature of man, is equally just to all, and 
stands in relation not only to the few years 
of man's present existence, but to the whole 



30 What Think You of Christ? 

of his eternal career" (Votaw, Sermon on 
the Mount). 

The doctrine here announced is truly di- 
vine, yet it is not from this that we pri- 
marily infer Christ's divine personality as 
manifested in the Gospels of the Synoptists. 
This introduction serves merely as a pre- 
paration, which was intended to dispose 
the hearts of His hearers, so that they might 
give due consideration to His claim of di- 
vine authority. For He continues: "Do 
not think that I am come to destroy the law 
or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, 
but to fulfill." Of old the Law had been 
given on Mount Sinai. Its enactment had 
been accompanied by a portentous display 
of lightning and thunder, which filled the 
hearts of the people with dread and conster- 
nation. It was a law of fear, whose prin- 
cipal sanction was the vengeance of Jeho- 
vah's inexorable justice. Jesus does not 
mean to destroy that Law, but He professes 
to put upon it the impress of His own 
mission of love. And yet although He does 
not set aside w T hat has been enacted in the 
days of old, He nevertheless assumes with- 
out hesitation, and in full consciousness of 
His inherent right to do so, the position of 
a supreme Lawgiver, whose authority is 
equal to that of Jehovah. For it must be 
noticed that He does not act merely as a 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 31 

divine legate, whose power is dependent on 
and limited by the terms of the commission 
which he has received ; but He evidently 
proceeds according to His own good pleas- 
ure and \vith an authority that knows no 
limitation. He does not say, as did the Proph- 
ets of old : "Thus saith the Lord God of 
hosts," but simply: "I say to you." He 
does not speak in the name and by the au- 
thority of another, as did Moses, the great 
lawgiver of the Jewish people ; but He 
speaks simply in His own name and by His 
own inherent authority. It is not the ven- 
geance of Jehovah that He puts forward as 
a sanction of His enactments, but His own 
displeasure, which gives them all the final- 
ity of divine laws. 

To convince oneself of this, one needs 
but read the account of this sermon as giv- 
en by St. Matthew, which ends with the 
significant statement, that "the people were 
in admiration at his doctrine; for he was 
teaching them as one having power, and not 
as the scribes and Pharisees" (VII. 28-29). 
"You have heard," Jesus tells the disciples 
and the multitude, "that it was said to them 
of old: Thou shalt not kill. And whoso- 
ever shall kill shall be in danger of the judg- 
ment. But I say to you, that whosoever is 
angry with his brother, shall be in danger of 
the judgment. . . . You have heard 



32 What Think You of Christ? 

that it was said to them of old: Thou 
shalt not commit adultery. But I say to 
you, that whosoever shall look on a woman 
to lust after her, hath already committed 
adultery with her in his heart. And it 
hath been said, Whosoever shall put away 
his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce. 
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put 
away his wife, except for the cause of forni- 
cation, maketh her to commit adultery : and 
he that shall marry her that is put away, 
committeth adultery. . . Again you have 
heard that it was said to them of old, Thou 
shalt not forswear thyself: but thou shalt 
pei form thy oaths to the Lord. But I say 
to you not to swear at all, neither by heaven, 
for it is the throne of God: nor by the 
earth, for it is his footstool : . . .You 
have heard that it hath been said, An eye 
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I 
say to you not to resist evil : but if one 
strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
also the other: . . . You have heard 
that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour, and hate thy enemies : But I say 
to you, Love your enemies : do good 
to them that hate you: and pray for them 
that persecute and calumniate you; that you 
may be the children of your Father who is 
in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon 
the good and bad, and raineth upon the 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 33 

just and the unjust. . . Be you therefore 
perfect, as also your heavenly Father is 
perfect" (V. 21-48). 

Surely, such language no man has ever 
dared to use : — it is as absolute and final as 
was that of Jehovah, when of old He en- 
graved the commandments of the Decalogue 
upon tablets of stone. In issuing this moral 
code, Christ assumed a position of authority 
that was supreme, and had He been but a 
mere man, He must necessarily have laid 
Himself open to the charge of blasphemous 
arrogance. And yet this position of inde- 
pendent authority, thus deliberately as- 
sumed at the very outset of His public 
career, He maintained with equal delibera- 
tion until His dying day. To this the 
Synoptists bear ample witness. They relate 
how He placed Himself far above all the 
Patriarchs and Prophets, and saintly men 
that ever lived: — all these, according to His 
teaching, were only servants of Jehovah 
but He was Jehovah's own Son (Matth. 
XXI, 33-39; Mark, XII, 1-12; Luke, XX. 
41-44). He claimed a higher origin than 
that of son of David (Matth. XXII. 41-46) ; 
a greater glory than that of the Temple 
(Matth. XII, 6) ; nay, He put Himself in 
the very place of Jehovah as the spouse of 
men's immortal souls (Matth. IX, 14-17; 
Mark, II, 18-22; Luke, V. 33-38). Again, a- 



34 What Think You of Christ? 

in the Sermon on the Mount He claimed 
independent legislative authority, so did He 
later on reassert that same authority when 
He told the Jews that He had power to 
change the observance of the Sabbath, ad- 
vancing no other reason than that He was 
"Lord even of the Sabbath" (Matth. XII, 
8). He reasserted that authority when He 
conferred upon His disciples the power to 
loosen and to bind upon earth in such wise 
that their actions should ipso facto be rati- 
fied in heaven. To Peter He said: T will 
give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. 
And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon 
earth, it shall be bound also in heaven : 
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, 
it shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matth. 
XVI. 19). And later on He entrusted a 
similar power to all the Apostles, saying: 
"Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall 
bind upon earth, shall be bound also in 
heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose 
upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven" 
(Matth. XVIII. 18)- The kingdom of heav- 
en therefore He claims as His own: admis- 
sion into it depends upon Him : He holds 
the kev, that is. the supreme and absolute 
authority, and that authority He delegates 
to whomsoever He pleases. Could Jehovah 
Himself have spoken and acted with great- 
er independence? 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 35 

And this independent authority stands 
out just as strikingly in the position which 
He assumes as the end and object of men's 
highest aspirations, and as the source of 
their moral obligations and their individ- 
ual responsibility. "Take my yoke upon 
you," He tells them, "and learn of ire, be- 
cause I am meek, and humble of heart : and 
you shall find rest for your souls. Come 
to me, all you that labour and are burdened, 
and I will refresh you" (Matth. XI, 28-29). 
He places the yoke of His law upon all who 
wish to attain salvation, and yet He calls 
Himself meek and humble of heart ! He 
demands the undivided service of every hu- 
man being, and as a reward He offers Him- 
self as the one object that can fill their souls 
with peace and joy : — yet He says that He 
is meek and humble of heart ! What a 
travesty of humility this would be, were 
His claim to men's submission not based 
upon His own inherent divine authority! 
And of what boundless presumption must 
He not be judged guilty in promising to 
refresh all that labour and are burdened, 
had He not within Himself the plentitude of 
the Godhead ! 

And more still. Not only does He bid 
men to submit to His law, but He tells 
them to do so in spite of every obstacle that 
may stand in the way. In the tenth chap- 



36 What Think You of Christ? 

ter of St. Matthew's Gospel, Christ is re- 
corded as saying: "'Every one therefore that 
shall confess me before men, I will also 
confess him before my Father who is in 
heaven. But he that shall deny me before 
men, I will also deny him before my Fath- 
er who is in heaven. . . . He that loveth 
father or mother more than me, is not wor- 
thy of me ; and he that loveth son or daugh- 
ter more than me, is not worthy of me. And 
he that taketh not up my cross, and follow- 
eth me, is not worthy of me. He that find- 
eth his life shall lose it : and he that shall 
lose his life for me. shall find it" (X 32-38). 
Hence neither the tenderest affections of the 
human heart, nor the highest interest of 
man's social state, nor yet the loss of life 
itself, is deemed of sufficient weight to set 
aside the law of Christ. His demands are 
as absolute as those of Jehovah Himself. 
He deliberately puts Himself before His fol- 
lowers and before the world at large, as the 
final end and object of their existence. If 
men will save their souls, they must be 
ready to forego for His sake the love of 
father and mother, the love of son and 
daughter, and of all else to which their 
hearts may cling. He wishes to be their 
One and their All ; He proposes Himself 
to one and all as the Supreme and Absolute 
Good. And yet this same Christ, as por- 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 37 

trayed in the Synoptic Gospels, was the most 
loving, the most affectionate, the most hum- 
ble of men : He was ever most consider- 
ate of the just claims of others; His life 
and conduct were the very antithesis of sel- 
fish ambition and overbearing pride ; and 
how then could He consistently make such 
demands? Only on the supposition that He 
knew Himself to be God. And how could 
the Evangelists record these same demands 
without a word of explanation? Only on 
the supposition that they believed Him to 
be God. 

This view forces itself even more strong- 
ly upon the thoughtful reader, when he 
comes to those passages in which the 
Evangelists record Christ's prediction of 
the Last Judgment, and the manner in 
which He will mete out reward and pun- 
ishment to both angels and men. Not only 
will He come with great power and ma- 
jesty to judge all nations, which alone 
would seem extraordinary enough, but He 
will judge them precisely according to the 
service which each individual person shall 
be found to have rendered or not rendered 
Him.. It is not their responsibility to 
Jehovah that comes in question, but their 
responsibility to Him alone. He will 
come, not with the angels of Jehovah, but 
with His angels; the nations shall be gath- 



38 What Think You of Christ? 

ered, not before the throne of Jehovah, 
but before His throne; He will approve or 
condemn, not what they have done or 
failed to do to Jehovah, but what they have 
done or failed to do to Himself. To them 
that shall be gathered on His right hand 
He will say: "Come, ye blessed of My 
Father, possess you the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world. 
For I was hungry, and you gave me to 
eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to 
drink ; I was a stranger, and you took me 
in : naked, and you covered me : sick, and 
you visited me : I was in prison, and you 
came to me. . . Amen I say to you, as 
long as you did it to one of these my 
least brethren, you did it to me" And to 
them that shall stand on His left hand He 
will say: "Depart from me, you cursed, 
into everlasting fire which was prepared 
for the devil and his angels. For I was 
hungry, and you gave me not to eat : I was 
thirsty, and you gave me not to drink: I 
was a stranger, and you took me not in; 
naked, and you covered me not : sick and 
in prison, and you did not visit me. . . 
Amen I say to you, as long as you did it 
not to one of these least, neither did you do 
it to me. And these shall go into ever- 
lasting punishment : but the just into life 
everlasting" (Matth. XXV, 31-46). 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 39 

Is it possible that a merely human being, 
even though he had received from God 
plenipotentiary powers over all nations 
could have used language like this? Can 
any creature, whether angel or man, make 
himself the absolute standard of right and 
wrong, and then mete out eternal reward 
or punishment according as men have or 
have not conformed themselves to that 
standard? Would not that be a direct 
usurpation of divine rights and prerogatives? 
Yet Christ uses such language ; He sets 
Himself up as such a standard ; He rewards 
and condemns precisely as men have or 
have not rendered Him their undivided 
service : — and all this He does with the 
most perfect consistency. As at the begin- 
ning of His public career He placed Him- 
self before the world as the Supreme Law- 
giver, and as during the course of that 
same career He ever pointed to His own 
person as the object of men's highest aspi- 
ration ; so now at the very end He an- 
nounces publicly that He will come as the 
Supreme Judge, and that He will decide 
men's eternal destinies according to their 
observance of the laws which He Himself 
has made. Whatever may be the objective 
value of His claim that He was a divine 
person, for with that we are not now di- 
rectly concerned, He certainly was con- 



40 What Think You of Christ? 

distent in urging it to the last, and that 
consistency the Synoptists have recorded 
in unequivocal terms. "If the title of Di- 
vinity is more explicitly put forward in St. 
John, the rights which imply it are insisted 
on in words recorded by the earlier Evan- 
gelists." 

Xow having this fact before your mind, 
what meaning, do you think, did the Evan- 
gelists assign to the title. Son of God, as 
applied to Christ? Did they intend to sig- 
nify thereby merely that Christ was a just 
man, or that He was a purely human Mes- 
siah, as Rationalists and Modernists would 
have us believe? Or did they also attach 
to it the further meaning that Christ Him- 
self was really God, as the Church has 
always held and taught? Taken together, 
the three Synoptic Gospels apply the title 
to Christ twenty-four times, and is it pos- 
sible that they never used it in its natural 
and obvious sense, when Christ's whole 
conduct, as narrated by themselves, con- 
stantly urged that sense upon their accept- 
ance? When, for instance, St. Matthew 
(XIV, 33) relates how Jesus stilled the 
tempest, and how thereupon "they that 
were in the boat came and adored him, say- 
ing : Indeed thou art the Son of God," is it 
conceivable that this title did not convey 
to him the full significance of Christ's di- 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 41 

vine personality? Or when he records how 
at Christ's baptism (III, 17) and at His 
transfiguration (XVIII, 5) a voice from 
heaven was heard to say : "This is my be- 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased : 
hear ye him," is it likely that he failed to 
recognize in that voice the Father's own 
testimony to the divinity of His Son? Or 
again, when he so graphically describes 
that memorable scene at Caesarea Philippi, 
where Peter made his profession of faith in 
his Master's divinity, saying: "Thou art 
Christ, the Son of the living God," is it 
reasonable to suppose that, whilst he nar- 
rated this, he thought only of Christ's Mes- 
sianic diginity? Whatever may have been 
the meaning attached to this title by those 
who first used it, there can be no doubt 
whatever that to the Evangelists it was 
expressive of Christ's divine personality. 
The whole tenor of their narratives vouches 
for this. They throughout represent Christ 
as the Son of God in the strict sense of that 
term, and consequently they cannot be sup- 
posed to exclude this sense when they ex- 
pressly call Him Son of God. 

Again, in view of the fact that Christ as- 
sumed from the very beginning of His pub- 
lic career a position of independent and 
divine authority, and consistently main- 
tained that position to the last moment, 



42 What Think You of Christ? 

what meaning must He Himself have at- 
tached to this title? What did He mean 
when He called Himself the Son, and when 
He claimed that God was His Father? As 
recorded by the first three Evangelists, He 
made use of these expressions on at least a 
score of different occasions. What value 
did the title have in His own mind? Is it 
reasonable to suppose that to Him it was 
nothing more than the outward expres- 
sion of an intimate moral union with God, 
when His whole conduct was expressive of 
a relation of absolute equality with the 
Father? Is it conceivable that He should 
constantly act as a divine person, and then 
when He called Himself the Son of God, 
He should only mean to indicate that He 
was a man? If to His own mind this title 
did not signify that He shared the divine 
nature with the Father, and that therefore 
He was true God, His actions most certain- 
ly belied His words; and if for nineteen 
hundred years the whole Christian world 
has erroneously understood His words in 
their literal and obvious sense, and in con- 
sequence has paid Him divine honors, al- 
though He was but a man, He Himself 
was the cause of that error, and He Him- 
self is responsible for that idolatry. Yet 
Rationalists and Modernists will have it 
that He was the very ideal of human per- 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 43 

fection : that no one can ever hope to equal 
Him in wisdom and holiness : — and He 
should have been guilty of a deception that 
would be altogether unintelligible in a man 
of common honesty and ordinary pru- 
dence? Would there be any consistency 
whatever in such a supposition? 

Here it is well to bear in mind how care- 
fully Christ distinguishes, on all occasions, 
between His own and His disciples rela- 
tion to the Father. He reminds His fol- 
lowers again and again that they have a 
Father in heaven even as He has ; yet He 
never places them on the same level with 
Himself in regard to the implied sonship. 
They are indeed sons of God, but He alone 
is the Son : — His is a sonship that is shared 
by no creature; it is altogether unique. 
Hence He never says, "our Father", but 
always, "my Father", and, "your Father". 
"Be you therefore perfect, as also your 
heavenly Father is perfect" (Matth. V/48). 
"He that doth the will of my Father who is 
in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom 
of heaven" (VII, 21). Even the '"Our 
Father" in the prayer which He taught His 
disciples is no exception to this invariable 
rule. As He did not include Himself in 
the petition, "forgive us our debts, as we 
also forgive our debtors" (VI 12), so 
neither did He mean to include Himself in 



44 What Think You of Christ? 

the opening words, "Our Father who art in 
heaven". This universally observed dis- 
tinction indicates with sufficient clearness 
that in Christ's own mind His disciples 
were sons of God by adoption, whereas He 
and He alone was the Son of God by na- 
ture. As He viewed the matter, there was 
between His divine sonship and that of His 
disciples a gulf of separation that could 
never be bridged over : — they were different 
not only in degree but in kind. 

Furthermore, on several occasions He 
brought out this distinction so clearly that 
no one could fail to understand its full 
significance. Thus, for instance, in the para- 
ble of the vineyard and the husbandmen, 
He represents the prophets and saintly men 
of old, as compared to Himself, simply as 
the servants of Jehovah, whilst He is Jeho- 
vah's Son and heir, to whom all His 
Father's possessions belong by way of nat- 
ural inheritance. As just and holy men, they 
were indeed sons of Jehovah, yet theirs 
was a sonship that did not remove the con- 
dition of servitude which was theirs by na- 
ture as God's creatures; but He is Jeho- 
vah's Son in a higher sense, which raises 
Him above all servitude, because His son- 
ship is based not upon adoption but upon 
divine generation. (Matth. XXI, 33; Mark, 
XI, 32; Luke, XX, 5). 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 45 

Again, on other occasions Christ used the 
title, Son of God, in such a way that its 
meaning is quite clear without reference to 
His ordinary conduct or to the sonship of 
other just men. Thus both St. Matthew 
and St. Luke record Him as saying to His 
disciples: "All things are delivered to me 
by my Father. And no one knoweth the 
Son, but the Father: neither doth anyone 
know the Father but the Son, and he to 
whom it shall please the Son to reveal him" 
(Matth. XI, 27; Luke, X, 22). In this text 
Christ brings out two points very clearly: 
First, that His own dignity and perfection 
is such that no one can adequately know it, 
except God the Father, whose knowledge 
being divine comprehends even the fullness 
of the Godhead. Now if only God can 
know the full perfection of the Son, then 
the Son must indeed be divine ; for were 
He a created being, no matter how great 
might be His perfection, He would neces- 
sarily come within the range of created in- 
telligence. The second point clearly set 
forth is the comprehensive knowledge of 
the Son in respect to God the Father. He 
claims that He knows the Father even as 
the Father knows Him; for when He says 
that no one knoweth the Father, but the 
Son, He evidently alludes to a knowledge 
that transcends all created understanding. 



46 What Think You of Christ? 

And this knowledge, He implies, is the na- 
tural result of His sonship. Now if as Son 
He is equal to the Father in knowledge, He 
must also be equal to Him in nature; be- 
cause the one necessarily implies the other, 
in as much as divine knowlege is insepara- 
ble from the divinity. This saying of 
Christ therefore, thus recorded by the Syn- 
optists, is identical in meaning with the 
striking statement of St. John, that "No 
man hath seen God at any time : the only 
begotten Son who is in the bosom of the 
Father, he hath declared him" (I, 18). Both 
assert unequivocally that Christ is the true 
Son of God : — that Christ Himself is God. 
Hence when Christ calls Himself the Son 
of God, or when He claims that God is 
His Father, He asserts that He Himself is 
True God of True God, consubstantial with 
the Father. 

With equal clearness is Christ's meaning 
set forth in the answer which He gave the 
High priest, as He stood before the San- 
hedrin on the eve of His death. When He 
was solemnly adjured to say openly 
whether He was the Son of the living God, 
He did so without hesitation. Rationalists 
and Modernists contend that His answer 
on that memorable occasion was nothing 
but an assertion of His Messianic office, but 
their contention is plainly contradicted by 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 47 

the account of St. Luke, who narrates the 
proceedings of the trial in greater, detail 
than St. Matthew does. As he puts it, 
Christ was asked two distinct questions. 
The first was, whether He was the Christ, 
that is, the Messiah. This question He an- 
swered by saying: "If I shall tell you, you 
will not believe me. And if I shall also 
ask you, you will not answer me, nor let me 
go. But hereafter the Son of man," that is, 
the Messiah, "shall be sitting on the right 
hand of the power of God/' This reference 
to the power of God, suggested the question 
that was to decide His fate. For they asked 
immediately : "Art thou then the Son of 
God?" that is, not only the Messiah, but 
also God's own Son? And Jesus answered: 
"You say that I am," which is the Hebrew 
way of saying: You speak the truth; I am 
in very deed. "Then they said : What need 
we any further testimony? for we ourselves 
have heard it from his own mouth." This 
gave them the long desired pretext for put- 
ting him to death. From His whole previ- 
ous conduct they had indeed inferred that 
He claimed divine sonship in the strict 
sense of that term, but they desired a clear 
statement on His part, so that they might 
hold Him up to the people as a blasphemer: 
— as one whom they believed to be only a 
man, yet who claimed to be God. Hence on 



48 What Think You of Christ? 

that solemn occasion, when His very life 
was at stake, Christ not only claimed that 
He was the Messiah, but also that He was 
the Son of God, and therefore a divine per- 
son. It was for this claim that the San- 
hedrin condemned Him to death, and it was 
to defend the truth of this claim that He 
died upon the crc ss. 

Xor did His claim that He was a divine 
person end here. For after His resurrec- 
tion, as both St. Matthew and St. Mark 
relate. He sent His Apostles to preach His 
doctrine to all nations, saying: "All power 
is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go- 
ing therefore, teach ye all nations : baptiz- 
ing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Teaching 
them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you : and behold I am 
with you all days, even to the consumma- 
tion o'f the world" (Matth. XXVIII, 18-20: 
Mark. XVI 15). Here He explicitly com- 
mands that all nations be baptized, not 
merely in the name of the Father and the 
Holy Ghost, but in His name as well. Xow 
this seems possible only on the supposition 
that the one divine nature is common to the 
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, 
and that therefore the Son. as well as the 
Father and the Holy Ghost, is truly God. 
And this doctrine of His own divine person- 



The Christ of the Synoptics. 49 

ality He solemnly commands to be preached 
to the whole world, and to be believed 
by all who wish to save their souls ; for St. 
Mark adds: "He that believeth not shall 
be condemned.'' 

Such then is the teaching of the Synoptists 
concerning Christ's personality : — their en- 
tire narrative implies that He is, in the 
strictest sense of the term, the Son of God — 
that He is True God. To eliminate this 
teaching from their Gospels, the documents 
which have come down to us must be re- 
jected almost entirely; yet even the most 
advanced critics admit that this cannot be 
done, and therefore the only possible con- 
clusion is, that the Synoptists no less than 
St. John bear unequivocal testimony to 
Christ's divine personality. 



50 



The Christ of St. Paul 

According to the teaching of the first 
three Evangelists Christ is truly a divine 
person, the Only Begotten Son of God, who, 
in the fullness of time, became man for the 
redemption of the world. This teaching is 
so interwoven with the entire narrative, 
that any attempt to eliminate it must neces- 
sarily result in the rejection of the docu- 
ments themselves. Yet the documents are 
so evidently genuine, at least as regards the 
substance of their contents, that no Rational- 
ist or Modernist has yet ventured to set 
them aside, although their united efforts 
have been directed to that end for years. 
Hence, even if we had nothing but these 
three Gospels, the divinity of Christ, as 
manifested during His earthly existence, 
would be as w r ell attested as any other fact 
in history. Higher critics may try to ex- 
plain away the significance of the state- 
ments made by these Evangelists, yet the 
statements themselves remain, and to the 
thoughtful and unbiased reader they can 
have no other meaning than that Christ is 
God as well as man. 

Scarcely less important than these first 



The Christ of St. Paul. 51 

three Gospels are the writings of St. Paul, 
whose testimony to Christ's divinity we 
shall consider in the present chapter. Some 
of his earlier Epistles, as those to the Thes- 
salonians and Galatians, are quite generally 
supposed to have been written even before 
the first of the Synoptic Gospels, and there- 
fore they may be considered as the oldest 
part of the New Testament. It is, how- 
ever, not exclusively the early date of his 
writings that makes them so valuable, but 
rather the sincerity of his convictions and 
the strength of his personality, which en- 
abled him to set forth the truth as he knew 
it, in spite of every obstacle that might 
stand in the way. Moreover he had never 
come in personal contact with the Saviour, 
and therefore he was wholly uninfluenced 
by that powerful charm, which, as Rational- 
ists will have it, biased the minds of 
Christ's immediate disciples. In fact, his 
early training, the traditions of his family, 
and his own strongly Judaistic views in re- 
gard to the coming Messiah, had so hope- 
lessly prejudiced him against the claims of 
Christ, that nothing short of a direct divine 
intervention would seem able to make of 
him aught else than a mortal enemy of the 
Christian name. Hence, if in later years 
he bore testimony to Christ, and laid down 
his very life in the defense of Christ's divin- 



52 What Think You of Christ? 

ity, his testimony must necessarily carry 
with it a weight that deserves the serious 
consideration of every thoughtful man. 

Saul of Tarsus, as he was called before 
his conversion, was a learned Pharisee, who, 
as he himself tells us in the Epistle to the 
Galatians, "made progress in the Jews' re- 
ligion above many of his equals in his own 
nation, being more abundantly zealous for 
the traditions of his fathers." He first ap- 
pears upon the page of history as an abet- 
tor of the execution of St. Stephen, on 
which occasion the witnesses laid down 
their garments at his feet. From that day 
on, his hatred against the Christians knew 
no bounds. As he himself puts it in the 
same Epistle to the Galatians, he "perse- 
cuted the Church of God beyond measure, 
and wasted it/' Or as the Acts so graphi- 
cally describe it, he "breathed out threaten- 
ings and slaughter" against the disciples of 
the Lord. But in the very midst of his 
bloodthirsty career, the saving grace of the 
merciful Redeemer, whom he persecuted in 
his disciples, touched his heart and changed 
him so completely that both his enemies 
and his friends were alike astonished. This 
conversion, at once the most striking in its 
sincerity and the most far-reaching in its 
results, took place near Damascus in Syria, 
whither he had gone with letters from the 



The Christ of St. Paul. 53 

High priest that empowered him to arrest 
any men and women whom he might find 
there confessing Christ, and bring them 
bound to Jerusalem. "Suddenly a light 
shined round about him. And falling on 
the ground, he heard a voice saying to 
him: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? 
Who said: Who art thou, Lord? And He: 
I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. It is 
hard for thee to kick against the goad. 
And he trembling and astonished said : 
Lord what wilt thou have me do? and 
the Lord said to him : Arise and go into the 
city, and there it shall be told thee what 
thou must do. . . . And Saul arose from 
the ground ; and when his eyes were 
opened, he saw nothing. But they leading 
him by the hands, brought him to Damas- 
cus. And he was there three days, with- 
out sight, and he did neither eat nor 
drink." At the end of this time, a certain 
disciple, named Ananias, was sent to him 
by the Lord, who restored his sight and 
baptized him. "And when he had taken 
meat, he was strengthened. And he was 
with the disciples at Damascus, for some 
days. And immediately he preached Jesus 
in the synagogues, that He is the Son of 
God" (Acts! IX, 1-21). 

Such is the story of Saul's conversion, as 
related in the Acts of the Apostles, and as 



54 What Think You of Cheist 

corroborated by himself in his Epistles. It 
was as sudden as it was complete, and it 
illustrates the marvelous power of God's 
grace, which can soften even the most 
hardened hearts. Saul was blinded by pre- 
judice, yet when the light of grace flooded 
his soul, he embraced the truth with a sin* 
cerity and whole-heartedness that was ab- 
solute. Many years later he wrote to the 
Corinthians: "By the grace of God I am 
what I am'" : but he added most appositely, 
"and his grace in me hath not been void"* 
(i Cor. XV, io). His response to the call 
of the Lord was instantaneous. "Lord, 
what wilt thou have me do?" was his first 
question, when he realized that the finger 
of God had touched his soul. The Christ 
whom he had considered an impostor stood 
before him as God's own Son, and His 
name he must henceforth cany "before 
the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of 
Israel" (Acts, IX, 15). However, it was 
not God's intention that he should do so 
immediately; he must first pass through a 
severe spiritual probation, lest his natural 
impetuosity should carry him beyond the 
bounds of prudence and discretion. Hence, 
guided by the Holy Spirit, he retired into 
Arabia, and there he spent two years in 
prayer and meditation and study, prepar- 
ing himself for the work which the Lord 



The Christ of St. Paul. 55 

had assigned to him as his share in the 
conversion of the world. There, too, he 
most likely received those wonderful revel- 
ations which enabled him afterwards to 
say: "I give you to understand, brethren, 
that the Gospel which was preached by me 
is not according to man. Neither did I 
receive it from man, nor did I learn it ; 
but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 
I, II. 12). Hence his teaching was in a 
manner distinct from that of the other 
Apostles, in as much as it flowed, so to 
speak, from a different source. The others 
preached what they had heard and seen ; 
they bore witness to Christ as they had 
known Him in His mortal life : Paul, as he 
was henceforth called, gave forth what had 
been revealed to him in spirit ; he preached 
Christ as he had seen Him in His glorified 
body. Yet he preached the same Christ ; 
for some eighteen years after his conver- 
sion, as he tells us, he went up to Jerusalem, 
in order to communicate to the other 
Apostles the gospel which he had an- 
nounced to the Gentiles, "lest perhaps he 
should run, or have run in vain." He 
would not trust himself entirely to his 
own subjective impressions, but preferred 
to confirm the truth of his teaching by an 
appeal to the visible authority which Christ 
had established on earth. 



56 What Thixk You of Christ? 

Xor did he consider himself justified to 
enter upon his great missionary career 
merely on the strength of his own private 
revelations. He patiently waited until the 
call came to him through the acknowledged 
authority of the Church. It was only 
when, at the bidding of the Holy Spirit, 
the Church of Antioch had imposed hands 
upon him, and sent him away to begin the 
work for which he had been chosen by 
God, that he finally commenced those Apos- 
tolic labors, which were to link his .name 
forever to that of the Prince of the Apostles. 
From that day forward the Spirit of the 
Lord gave him no rest until he had car- 
ried the name of Christ to the most distant 
nations. Asia Minor, Greece, the islands 
of the Mediterranean, Italy, and most prob- 
ably Spain, received from him the message 
of salvation as he himself had received it 
from Christ. His success was marvelous. 
Persons flocked to him from every rank of 
society; they listened to his burning words, 
received his doctrine, and confessed Christ. 
These he gathered into communities, and 
when he had placed them in charge of con- 
secrated pastors, he set out for new con- 
quests in other lands. It was to some of 
these several communities that he wrote 
the Epistles which have come down to us 
under his name. They are fourteen in 



The Christ of St. Paul. 57 

number, of varying length and importance ; 
and from them we must gather Paul's 
teaching concerning Christ, as we shall 
now proceed to do. 

As one would naturally suppose, and as 
even a superficial reading readily shows, 
these Epistles are in no sense so many 
systematic expositions of Christian doc- 
trine : they are merely occasional letters, 
called forth by the needs of individual 
churches. Some of them contain warnings 
against rising heresies; other reprehend 
religious abuses among the faithful ; others 
give directions for the guidance of those 
in authority ; whilst some few deal with 
questions of universal application. Yet 
whilst this is true as regards their general 
character, it is conceded on all hands that 
they contain sufficient doctrinal matter to 
enable one to arrive at a clear understand- 
ing of the writer's faith and teachings. 
They are the letters of an Apostle, and as 
such they necessarily reflect the message 
which he was sent to announce in the name 
and by the authority of Christ. What that 
message was, at least in its bearing upon 
the person of Christ, we shall now en- 
deavor to show. 

St. Paul's teaching concerning Christ 
and His work may be gathered around two 
central or fundamental truths, which stand 



58 What Thixk You of Christ? 

out clearly and distinctly in nearly every 
one of his letters. The first of these truths 
is, that Christ is the promised Messiah, 
who by the outpouring of His blood re- 
deemed the world from sin. "When the 
fullness of time was come," he tells the 
Galatians, "God sent his Son. made of a 
woman, made under the law : that he 
might redeem them who were under the 
law : that we might receive the adoption 
of sons" (I\ . 4, 5). He was deeply im- 
pressed with the historic fact that the 
human race had originally fallen from 
grace, and had thereby come under the 
domination of sin. This domination of sin 
was universal, because it had its origin in 
the head of the human family, who trans- 
mitted his sinful condition to all his des- 
cendants. "By one man," he writes to 
the Romans, "sin entered into this world 
and by sin death : and so death passed 
unto all men in whom all have sinned" 
(V. 12). And this sin of nature, which in- 
fects each human soul at its very origin, 
prepares the way for those other trans- 
gressions which imply an abuse of the in- 
dividual free will, and therefore constitute 
personal sin. Under this twofold weight 
of iniquity, as St. Paul on various oc- 
casions so graphically describes it, the 
world was groaning and travailing even 



The Christ of St. Paul. 59 

until the coming of Christ. It was from 
this condition of unrighteousness and moral 
servitude that Christ was to deliver man- 
kind through the sacrifice of His own life. 
Hence in His character of Saviour and 
Redeemer, Christ was considered by St. 
Paul as the second Adam, who by His 
obedience was to undo the harm wrought 
by the disobedience of the first Adam. It 
is in this sense that he writes to the 
Romans: "As by the disobedience of one 
man, many were made sinners ; so also by 
the obedience of one, many shall be made 
just" (V. 19). The first Adam was the 
moral head and representative of the entire 
human race ; upon his fidelity to the law 
of his Maker depended the happiness and 
initial righteousness of all his posterity. 
He had his probation and his trial, but he 
was found wanting, and so the race went 
astray from its God. The second Adam 
took the same relative position of headship 
in the moral order ; upon Him was made 
dependent the salvation of all. He too had 
His probation and His trial, but He was 
faithful unto death, and so He started a 
new movement Godward. Yet this new 
Godward movement, as St. Paul conceived 
it, postulated first of all a full reparation 
of the injury done to God by sinful man. 
Christ therefore must pay the price of 



60 What Think You of Christ? 

Redemption, and so restore to God the 
honor of which he had been robbed by His 
own creatures. Hence when St. Paul 
wrote to the Ephesians that God "hath 
predestinated us unto the adoption 6i chil- 
dren through Jesus Christ unto Himself. 
, , . . in His beloved Son", he im- 
mediately added, "in whom we have re- 
demption through His blood, the remission 
of sins, according to the riches of His 
grace" (I, 5-7). And the Corinthians he 
reminds of the fact that Christ "who knew 
no sin ; God hath made sin for us, that we 
might be made the justice of God in Him" 
(II. Cor. 5, 21). A similar expression he 
uses in his letter to the Galatians, where 
he writes : "Christ hath redeemed us from 
the curse of the law, being made a curse 
for us : for it is written : Cursed is every 
one that hangeth on the tree" (Gal. Ill, 
13). To the mind of St. Paul, therefore, 
Christ is not merely our Saviour in an 
ethical sense, in as much as He led our 
fallen race back to God by the holiness of 
His example and the purity of His doctrine, 
but He is in very truth a Redeemer, who 
in His own person paid the ransom re- 
quired by the justice of God. It was in 
this sense that he wrote to the Colossians: 
"And you, when you were dead in your 
sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh ; 



The Christ of St. Paul 61 

he hath quickened together with him, for- 
giving you all offenses : blotting out the 
handwriting of the decree that was against 
us, which was contrary to us. And he 
hath taken the same out of the way, 
fastening it to the cross/' (II, 13, 14). 

According to St. Paul's teaching, there- 
fore, Christ's sufferings are vicarious in 
character: — we had sinned, but He suf- 
fered for our sins; He was without sin, 
yet He was made the victim to be immolated 
for the forgiveness of sin ; He bore the 
pains of the redemption, yet we reaped 
the fruit thereof. It is this same idea of 
vicarious sufferings that enters so largely 
into St. Paul's conception of Christ's 
priesthood. He represents Christ as the 
eternal High-priest, who through His death 
enters the Holy of Holies, and offers Him- 
self as a victim of propitiation for the sins 
of the world. "It was fitting," he writes 
to the Hebrews, "that we should have such 
a high-priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, 
separated from sinners, and made higher 
than the heavens; who needs not daily (as 
the other priests) to offer sacrifices first for 
his own sins and then for the people's; 
for this He did once, in offering Himself" 
(VII, 26, 27). In this sacrifice "we are 
sanctified by the oblation of the body of 
Jesus Christ once." (X, 10). 



62 What Think You of Christ? 

Hence this death of the sinless Christ, 
whilst it fully satisfied the justice of an 
offended God, is at the same time the 
source of life for the world that was dead 
in sin. To this truth St. Paul refers in 
nearly all his Epistles, taking special care 
to impress upon the faithful that their life 
springs from the death of Christ, yet in 
such wise that they must appropriate that 
life by the acceptance of His grace. "With 
Christ," he writes to the Galatians, "I am 
nailed to the cross. And I live, now not I ; 
but Christ liveth in me. And that I live 
not in the flesh : I live in the faith of the 
Son of God, who loved me, and delivered 
Himself for me/' (II, 19. 20). And to the 
Romans he addresses this beautiful pas- 
sage: "Know you not that all we, who are 
baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in 
His death? For we are buried together 
with Him by baptism in death; that as 
Christ is risen from the dead by the glory 
of the Father, so we also may walk in 
newness of life. For if we have been 
planted together in the likeness of his 
death, we shall also be in the likeness of 
His resurrection. Knowing this, that our 
old man is crucified with him, that the 
body of sin may be destroyed, to the end 
that we may serve sin no longer," (VI, 
3-6). Christ therefore is the source of a 



The Christ of St. Paul. 63 

new life, which He communicates to all 
who are united to Him through a practical 
faith in His redemption. He is the true 
Messiah, who was to crush the head of the 
serpent, and secure for the fallen race the 
hard fought victory over sin and death. 

This is the first fundamental truth that 
runs through all the writings of St. Paul, 
and with this the second one, equally as 
fundamental, is intimately connected. This 
is the divine Sonship of Christ. The Christ 
of St. Paul was indeed a true man ; for "it 
behooved him in all things to be made 
like unto his brethren, that he might be- 
come a merciful and faithful high-priest be- 
fore God, that he might be a propitiation for 
the sins of the people. For in that, wherein 
he himself hath suffered and been tempted, 
he is able to succor them also that are 
tempted'' (Hebr. II, 17, 18). But this 
same Christ is also constantly represented 
as the Son of God. It was because of His 
divine sonship that He himself was sinless 
and that he had the power to satisfy for 
the sins of others. It was on account of 
this same divine sonship that St. Paul be- 
held in the Saviour's sufferings and death 
a manifestation of God's boundless love for 
man. "He that spared not even His own 
Son," he writes to the Romans, "but 
delivered him up for us all, how hath he 



64 What Think You of Christ? 

not also, with him, given us all things?" 
(VIII, 32). Christ is not only God's Son, 
as in a certain sense all just men are the 
sons of God, but He is God's Own Son, by 
a filiation, therefore, which He does not 
share with creatures. Yet this can only 
mean one thing, namely, that He was be- 
gotten of the Father and therefore a divine 
person. Hence the fact that God delivered 
Him up for us all was indeed a manifesta- 
tion of divine love, which would make all 
other gifts, however great, appear as in- 
significant. 

It is sometimes objected that this con- 
clusion does not seem to tally with the fact 
that St. Paul attributes Christ's divine 
sonship to His resurrection and ascension, 
speaking of these events in such a way as 
if Christ was then constituted Son of God. 
Thus in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts 
he is recorded as addressing his country- 
men in Pisidia in these words: "And we 
declare unto you, that the promise which 
was made to our fathers, the same God 
hath fulfilled to our children, raising up 
Jesus, as in the second Psalm also is writ- 
ten. "Thou art my son, this day have 1 
begotten thee." And in the Epistle to the 
Romans he says of Christ that He "was 
predestinated the Son of God in power, ac- 
cording to the spirit of sanctification, by 



The Christ of St. Paul. 65 

the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ 
from the dead." Hence it would seem that 
the divine sonship was conferred upon 
Christ as a reward for the work of re- 
demption, to which He had submitted 
Himself out of obedience to God's will, and 
consequently He would not be a divine 
person. This objection, however, has no 
real force, if the texts quoted are inter- 
preted according to the mind of the 
Apostle. For he does not intend to assert 
that the resurrection was the origin of 
Christ's divine sonship, but only that it 
was a manifestation of the same. During 
His mortal life, Christ appeared subject to 
all the infirmities that are necessarily con- 
nected with a true human existence ; His 
Divinity was, as it were, hidden under the 
veil of His Humanity, but after His resur- 
rection all this was changed. Then the 
glory of His divine personality was poured 
out upon His human nature ; then He 
entered as man upon that glorious exis- 
tence which had been His always as God; 
and therefore the resurrection might well 
be said to be an outward manifestation of 
His divine sonship "in power, according to 
the spirit of sanctification." 

That this was really the meaning of St. 
Paul appears to evidence from his teaching 
concerning the nature of Christ's divinity, 



66 What Think You of Christ? 

as set forth in several of his Epistles. 
Thus warning the Colossians against cer- 
tain false teachers, who tried to "degrade 
Jesus Christ to the rank of one of a long 
series of inferior beings, supposed to range 
between mankind and the supreme God," 
he tells them that Jesus Christ "is the 
image of the invisible God, the first-born 
of every creature." And fearing lest this 
expression might not be sufficiently clear, 
he adds the reason why He must be con- 
sidered the image of God, even as human 
children are the images of their parents; 
and why He must be accepted as the first- 
born of every creature, that is, superior to 
all things created. "For," he says, "in him 
were all things created in heaven and on 
earth, visible and invisible, whether 
thrones or dominations, or principalities, 
or powers: all things were created by him 
and in him. And he is before all, and by 
him all things consist." (I, 15-17). He 
is therefore the image of God, because He 
has the very nature of God, being Himself 
the Creator, who by His omnipotent power 
called all things out of nothingness at the 
beginning of time. He is the first-born of 
every creature, because He is before all, 
and by Him all things consist. His rela- 
tion to the world of created things is three- 
fold; for all things in earth and in heaven, 



The Christ of St. Paul. 67 

seen and unseen, men and angels, were 
created in Him, by Him and for Him. 
They were created in Him, because His 
own infinite being is the archetypal form 
after which all creatures were fashioned, 
and in Him they have their strength and 
consistency of being; they w r ere created 
by Him, because it was His omnipotent 
power that summoned the w r orlds out of 
nothingness, and sustains them in their 
existence ; they were created for Him, be- 
cause He did not create them for a God 
superior to Himself, but He made them for 
His own glory, being their one end, as well 
as their one source. Christ, therefore, al- 
though true man, is also true God ; because 
He is the beginning and the end of all 
things. 

Nor is this the only place in which St. 
Paul teaches the divinity of Christ in 
terms that cannot be misunderstood. 
When he wishes to exhort the Philippians 
to practice humility and self-renunciation, 
he points to Christ as their model, "who," 
he says, "being in the form of God, thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God ; but 
emptied himself, taking the form of a ser- 
vant, being made in the likeness of man, 
and in habit found as a man." (II, 6, 7). 
That is, before He assumed a human 
nature, Christ was God, possessing all the 



68 What Think You of Christ? 

perfections of the Divinity; possessing 
them, not as it were by an act of unjust 
usurpation, but by right of His divine 
origin. Yet God though He was, He 
deigned to assume the form of a servant, 
hiding His divine glory under the veil of 
human nature. In this human nature, thus 
assumed as His own, He, the God of might 
and majesty, "humbled Himself, becoming 
obedient unto death, even to the death of 
the cross." "For which cause God also 
hath exalted him, and hath given him a 
name which is above all names ; that in the 
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of 
those that are in heaven, on earth and 
under the earth ; and .that every tongue 
should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ 
is in the glory of God the Father." 

It would have been impossible for the 
Apostle to adduce a stronger argument, 
whereby to persuade his converts to prac- 
tice humility ; yet the force of the argu- 
ment depends entirely upon the truth of 
Christ's divinity. Had His claim to be 
equal with the Father been unfounded; 
had it rested upon robbery or an act of 
unjust usurpation; it would not have been 
humility on His part to appear as man and 
to yield obedience, but simply an act of 
justice and of necessity. Neither would the 
act have been deserving of the reward 



The Christ of St. Paul. 69 

which the Apostle claims for Christ. A 
merely human Christ, though the most 
perfect of God's creatures, could not be 
made the object of divine honors, so that 
"in His name every knee should bow, of 
those that are in heaven, on earth, and 
under the earth ; and that every tongue 
should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ 
is in the glory of God the Father." Hence 
not only does the Apostle directly assert 
that Christ was true God ; but he made 
that assertion the foundation of an argu- 
ment which was to enforce the practice of 
the most difficult of Christian virtues. 
Yet, if anything, St. Paul was logical, and 
it would be folly to believe that he rested 
his argument upon a false supposition. 

And thus, if there were need of it, we 
might adduce a vast number of texts, in 
which St. Paul sets forth the same 
doctrine, that Christ is God's own Son, 
that He is true God. In his First Epistle 
to the Corinthians (II, 8) he calls Him the 
Lord of glory ; in his Second Epistle to the 
same church, he states that Christ before 
becoming man "possessed all the riches of 
the Godhead." Writing to the Colossians, 
he affirms that in Christ "dwelleth all the 
fullness of the Godhead corporeally"; and 
in his celebrated letter to the Romans, he 
says that Christ "is over all things, God 



70 What Think You of Christ? 

blessed forever/' In conformity with this 
teaching, he constantly exhorts his fol- 
lowers to invoke the name of Christ as 
that of God (I Cor. I, 2; II Tim. II, 22\ 
Rom. X, 12-14, etc.) ; he associates Him 
with God the Father as the one true foun- 
dation of the Christian Church (I. Thess. 
I, 1; III, 11; II. Thess. I, 1) ; the Life of 
all Christians and the Bestower of eternal 
glory (Col. Ill, 4). Hence that St. Paul, 
at one time an unbelieving Pharisee, be- 
came after his conversion a firm believer 
in Christ's divinity, and preached that 
divinity to the Gentile world, admits ab- 
solutely of no doubt. He claimed to know 
only Christ, and that Christ alone he was 
commissioned to preach ; but the Christ 
whom he knew, and the Christ whom he 
preached was most certainly true God. Not 
even St. John sets forth the divinity of 
Christ in more striking terms. And yet 
St. Paul's writings, as already stated, were 
not meant to be a full and systematic ex- 
planation of Christian doctrine ; they were 
intended only for believing Christians, with 
whom the divinity of Christ was a funda- 
mental article of the faith. In what terms, 
then, do you think, would he have ex- 
pressed himself, had he committed to writ- 
ing all that he believed and taught con- 
cerning Christ's divine personality? Had 



The Christ of St. Paul. 71 

he thought fit to do so, we should most 
certainly have had a document which 
would have been the despair of Rational- 
ists and Modernists, although it is almost 
equally certain that they would not have 
acknowledged it as the work of St. Paul. 

A neat summing up of St. Paul's faith in 
Christ has been preserved for us in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. Modern critics, 
of course, will not have it that the Apostle 
of the Gentiles ever wrote this famous let- 
ter, but that the doctrine contained there- 
in is truly Pauline in character, nothing 
but bad faith can call in question. The 
summary reads as follows: "God who, at 
sundry times and in divers manners, spoke 
in times past to the fathers by the prophets, 
last of all, in these days hath spoken to us 
by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir 
of all things, by whom also he made the 
world. Who being the brightness of his 
glory, and the figure of his substance, and 
upholding all things by the word of his 
power, making purgation of sins, sitteth 
on the right hand of the majesty on high. 
Being made so much the better than the 
angels, as he hath inherited a more excel- 
lent name than they. For to which of the 
angels hath he said at any time, Thou art 
my Son, to-day have I begotten thee? And 
again, I will be to him a Father, and he 



72 What Think You of Christ? 

shall be to me a Son? And again, when he 
bringeth in the first begotten into the 
world, he saith : And let all the angels 
adore him. And to the angels indeed he 
saith: He that maketh his angels spirits 
and his ministers a flame of fire. But to 
the Son: Thy throne, O God, is for ever 
and ever : . . . And : Thou in the beginning, 

Lord, didst found the earth : and the 
works of thy hands are the heavens. They 
shall perish, but thou shalt continue: and 
they shall all grow old as a garment. And 
as a vesture shalt thou change them, and 
they shall be changed : but thou art the 
selfsame, and thy years shall not fail" (I, 

1 : 12). 



73 



The Word Incarnate 

As was shown in the discussion on The 
Christ of the Synoptics, the first three 
Evangelists teach the divinity of Christ by 
implication rather than by direct state- 
ment. They narrate His words and His 
deeds in such a way that anyone who reads 
their narratives with an open and un- 
biased mind is led to the unavoidable 
conclusion that Christ claimed to be True 
God, and that the Evangelists fully ac- 
cepted His claim as legitimate ; but in no 
single instance do they put this claim for- 
ward as the burden of their narratives. It 
runs through their accounts of His life 
and deeds from beginning to end, and it 
underlies Christ's own teaching as its one 
solid foundation ; yet they never seem so- 
licitous to put upon it any special stress, 
or even to set it forth in clear and explicit 
terms. What seems to have been upper- 
most in their minds, and what they appear 
to have deemed of prime importance for 
their immediate followers, may be summed 
up in the angel's message to the shepherds 
of Bethlehem: "Behold I bring you good 
tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the 
people : for this day is born to you a 



74 What Think You of Christ? 

Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city 
of David" (Luke, II, n). They announced 
first and foremost that Christ was the 
Saviour, who had redeemed the world from 
sin; although they wished at the same 
time to have it clearly understood that He 
was also the Son of God: — that He was a 
God Incarnate. 

The very opposite of this seems to be 
true in the case of St. John. He also knows 
that Christ is the Messiah ; that He was 
sent to save that which was lost; that He 
laid down His life for His sheep: but what 
he keeps constantly before the reader, and 
what he almost never fails to emphasize, 
is the fact that Christ is a divine Messiah; 
that He is True God of True God, the Only 
Begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth. This difference of scope and method, 
as observed in St. John and the Synoptics, 
is aptly stated by St. Augustine in his com- 
mentary on St. John's Gospel where he 
says : "In the four Gospels, or rather in 
the four books of the one Gospel, the 
Apostle St. John, deservedly compared 
to an eagle by reason of his spiritual under- 
standing, has lifted his annunciation of 
truth to a far higher and sublimer point 
than the other three, and by this elevation 
he would fain have lifted up our hearts 
likewise. For the other three Evangelists 



The Word Incarnate. 75 

walked, so to speak, on earth with our Lord 
as man. Of His Godhead they said but a 
few things. But John, as if he found it 
oppressive to walk on earth, has opened 
his treatise with a peal of thunder ; he has 
raised himself not merely above the earth, 
and the whole compass of the air and 
heaven, but even above every angel-host, 
and every order of the invisible powers, 
and has reached even to Him by Whom all 
things were made, in that sentence, 'In the 
beginning was the Word' " (In Joan. 36). 

However, this difference, as regards both 
method and scope, must not be attributed 
entirely to the difference of personality in 
the several Evangelists. It arose to a great 
extent from the altered conditions in Ec- 
clesiastical affairs that had developed since 
the first three Gospels had been written. 
According to the commonly accepted view 
of modern critics, at least thirty years in- 
tervened between the appearance of St. 
Luke's Gospel, which was the last of the 
Synoptics in point of time, and that of St. 
John. During this interval, the spirit of 
skepticism and religious innovation, which 
somehow seems common to all ages and 
countries, had found sufficient time to as- 
sert itself, and there were not wanting 
those who set up theories of their own con- 
cerning Christ's work and mission and the 



76 What Think You of Christ? 

fundamental fact of His divine personality. 
St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, and St. John 
himself, found it necessary to warn the 
faithful against these religious skeptics and 
innovators in the several Epistles which 
they wrote ; whilst St. Paul, in one of his 
earliest Letters, saw himself constrained to 
pronounce anathema upon certain mischief- 
makers, who preached a gospel different 
from the one which he had received from 
Christ. Some there were who made pre- 
tension to the possession of secret knowl- 
edge, not vouchsafed to the faithful at 
large, and who for that reason called them- 
selves Gnostics, or the Knowing Ones. 
One of their tenets, which they began to 
broach towards the end of the first century, 
attributed to Christ a sort of inferior divin- 
ity, which made of Him a being midway 
between the highest angel and the Supreme 
God. Others again maintained that Christ 
was purely human, but had been raised to 
extraordinary sanctity by the communica- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, through whose 
power He had wrought His miracles. Their 
leader, a certain Cerinthus, lived at Ephe- 
sus, the adopted city of St. John, where he 
drew after him a large following. Hence 
if Christ was true God, consubstantial with 
the Father, the time had certainly come 
when that truth should be set forth in the 



The Word Incarnate. 77 

clearest and most unequivocal terms. It 
should be set forth, moreover, by one who 
could speak with all the authority of an 
eye witness, and whose commission to 
teach had come directly from Christ Him- 
self. Such a one was St. John. For as 
he himself says in his First Epistle: "That 
which was from the beginning, which we 
have heard, which we have seen with our 
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our 
hands have handled, of the word of life: 
. . . we declare unto you, that you may 
have fellowship with us, and our fellow- 
ship may be with the Father, and with His 
Son Jesus Christ ,, (I, 1-3). 

Moreover it was very desirable that the writer 
of the Gospel should accommodate himself, 
as far as that was possible, to the phrase- 
ology of the men whose errors he wished to 
correct ; so that there might be no room 
for dispute about the meaning of terms. 
Now at that time there was much specula- 
tion going on about the divine Logos, or 
the divine Word, first introduced into philo- 
sophic discussions by Plato, and later on 
popularized by the Jewish philosopher 
Philo. Both the doctrine and the term had 
to some extent been adopted by certain 
Gnostic theorizers in their teaching con- 
cerning Christ's relation to the Godhead. 
Hence if the term could be employed in an 



78 What Think You of Christ? 

orthodox sense, its use by the Evangelist 
would be more than justified. Whether St. 
John was to any extent conversant with 
the various philosophic systems that flour- 
ished in Asia Minor in his day, may in- 
deed be a matter of reasonable doubt; but 
that he had considerable knowledge of the 
Logos doctrine and of the terms in which 
it was expressed, can hardly be called in 
question. The mere fact that heretical 
teachers made use of it to impugn the 
divinity of Christ, was in itself sufficient to 
bring it to his notice. Moreover although 
the doctrine as taught by Philo was more 
or less a matter of philosophic speculation, 
nevertheless it had a solid foundation in 
the Old Testament writings, where God's 
Eternal Wisdom and Creative Word ap- 
pear time and again under a distinctly per- 
sonal aspect. Hence there was a very good 
reason why St. John should begin his Gos- 
pel with that sublime sentence: "In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God." He 
saw in it the Christian statement of doc- 
trine which had been revealed to the 
prophets of old. but which later philosoph- 
ical speculations had sadly distorted. 

It has been well said, that "if there were 
nothing else to the purpose in the whole 
New Testament, the first fourteen verses 



The Word Incarnate. 79 

of the fourth Gospel would suffice to per- 
suade a believer in Holy Scripture of the 
truth that Jesus Christ is absolutely God" 
(Liddon, p. 228). In these few lines, which 
form a prologue or introduction to the 
Gospel narrative, St. John sets forth a sum- 
mary of his own personal faith in the God 
Man : — a faith which had in the first in- 
stance indeed been freely bestowed by the 
merciful God, but which had also been 
nourished and strengthened and matured 
by what he himself had seen and heard and 
experienced of "the word of life'' during 
his three years' association with Jesus of 
Nazareth. It is, as it were, an Apostolic 
profession of faith ; not thrown out at ran- 
dom and then left standing by itself, but 
deliberately stated as an expression of his 
deepest conviction and casting its fervid 
glow over the entire subsequent narrative. 
Hence this Prologue is not merely a poetic 
effusion, as Rationalists will have it, but 
rather a succinct exposition of the most 
fundamental mystery of the Christian re- 
ligion: — an exposition based partly upon 
revelations contained in the Old Testament 
and partly upon the historical facts which 
the Evangelist himself had observed and 
which he later on set forth in his Gospel. 
This is, aside from other reasons, suf- 
ficiently evident from the words with which 



80 What Think You of Christ? 

he concludes his narrative. For at the end 
of the twentieth chapter he says : "Many 
other signs also did Jesus in the sight of 
his disciples, which are not written in this 
book. But these are written, that you may 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God: and that believing, you may have life 
in his name" (30, 31). What he has writ- 
ten therefore "in this book/' are not pious 
reflections or devout meditations, but solid 
facts that rest upon a firm historical basis. 
The Prologue reads as follows: "In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God. 
The same was in the beginning with God. 
All things were made by him : and without 
him was made nothing that was made. In 
him was life, and the life was the light of 
men. And the light shineth in darkness, 
and the darkness did not comprehend it. 
There was a man sent from God, whose 
name was John. This man came for a wit- 
ness, to give testimony of the light, that 
all men might believe through him. He 
was not the light, but was to give testi- 
mony of the light. That was the true light, 
which enlighteneth every man that cometh 
into this world. He was in the world, and 
the world was made by him, and the world 
knew him not, he came unto his own, and 
his own received him not. But as many as 



The Word Incarnate. 81 

received him, he gave them power to be 
made the sons of God, to them that believe 
in his name. Who are born, not of blood, 
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
of man, but of God. And the Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we 
saw his glory, the glory as it were of the 
only begotten of the Father,) full of grace 
and truth. " (I, 1-14.) 

Well did St. Augustine say, that St. John 
"opened his treatise as it were with a peal 
of thunder" — it is a peal that has resounded 
over all the world, and whose echoes will 
not die aw r ay until the end of time. The 
Old Testament, sublime passages as it does 
contain, presents nothing that compares 
with this in solemn majesty, poetic beauty 
and depth of religious thought. On read- 
ing the opening lines, one feels as if the 
God-Man Himself were present, withdraw- 
ing for a moment the veil of His human 
nature and thus affording a passing glimpse 
of the fullness of His God-head. Time with 
its limitations is lost sight of, and the 
boundless ocean of eternity lies outstretched 
before the wondering mind. Creation itself 
withdraws from view, and the uncreated 
God is seen alone upon His throne of 
glory: — the uncreated God and the Word, 
who in the beginning was with God, and 
who was God. Poets may be able to body 



82 What Think You of Christ? 

forth the shapes of things unseen; they 
may be able to give to an airy nothing a 
local habitation and a name; but the poet 
did not live who gave forth a thought like 
this. It is a thought essentially divine, and 
as such it did not have its birth in human 
intelligence : — it sprang into being in the 
bosom of the Godhead, and thence it flashed 
its light through the darkness of created 
things, changing that darkness itself into 
a source of light. It is only as enlightened 
from on high that the human mind can con- 
ceive and that human tongue can utter 
those mystic words: "In the beginning was 
the Word, and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God." It is the reflex of 
God's own eternal thought, gleaming forth 
from a mind created after His image and 
likeness. 

It is almost a pity that we should have 
to subject this sublime passage to a critical 
analysis in order to bring out its doctrinal 
value. One teels instinctively that it is a 
subject for prayerful meditation rather than 
for critical study; yet because it enshrines 
in its poetic setting the most fundamental 
mysteries of our holy religion, there is need 
of studious inquiry into its deepest sig- 
nificance, so that it may become manifest 
what precise position these mysteries oc- 
cupied in the mind of the disciple who 



The Word Incarnate. 83 

reclined on the bosom of his Master. It is 
with this end in view that we shall examine 
somewhat in detail the contents of this in- 
spired Prologue. 

For clearness' sake we may divide the 
whole passage into three distinct parts, al- 
though they so interlace with one another 
that it is difficult to draw between them a 
sharp line of demarcation. In the first part 
the Evangelist considers the Personal 
Word of God, as He was from all eternity 
in the bosom of the Father. In the begin- 
ning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God. The 
same was in the beginning with God." He 
places himself in thought at the starting 
point of all time, at the moment when 
through absolute nothingness resounded 
the voice of the Omnipotent Creator, and 
in response to it the first created beings 
leaped into existence. Even then, at the 
very birth of time, the Word already was. 
He did not come into being when time be- 
gan, but He is antecedent to all time: — He 
is outside and above all created things; He 
is eternal and self-existent, even as the 
eternal and self-existent God. "And the 
Word was with God, and the Word was 
God." He was with God, because He is 
the Word of God. God's uncreated intel- 
ligence conceived and brought forth the 



84 What Think You of Christ? 

Word even as the human mind conceives 
and brings forth the conscious thought. 
"The Word is the Thought of God, not in- 
termittent and precarious like human 
thought, but subsisting with the intensity 
of a personal form." In one sense the Word 
is distinct from God, or rather from God 
the Father, in as much as He is generated 
or brought forth as a divine person; and 
yet in another sense He is identical with 
the same God, because He is God's own 
Word, God's own substantial wisdom, one 
with God in nature. Hence the relation of 
the Word to God, as indicated in these 
opening lines, is that of a son to his father ; 
both share the same divine nature, although 
they are distinct as persons. In this the 
Evangelist calls attention to the pro- 
foundest mystery of the Godhead. The 
Eternal Generation of the Word, which in- 
deed the human mind may prayerfully con- 
template, but which it can never hope to 
fathom. 

In the second part of the Prologue, the 
Evangelist sets forth the relation of the 
Word to creation, both as regards the crea- 
tive act and the physical and moral condi- 
tion of creatures after they have once been 
called into being. "All things were made 
by him, and without him was made nothing 
that was made." Not only did the Word 



The Word Incarnate. 85 

exist before anything whatever came into 
being, but it was precisely the Word's 
creative power that filled the void of empty 
space with created existences. It is the 
Wisdom of God that conceives the possi- 
bility of creation ; it is the Word of God 
that makes this possible creation an exist- 
ing reality. Hence God the Word or God 
the Son, as St. John now speaks of Him, is 
so far from being a creature that He is the 
very Creator from whom all creatures re- 
ceive their being. And to emphasize this 
truth, to check every heretical tendency to- 
ward looking upon the Word as something 
created, he repeats his first statement in an- 
other form, saying: "Without him was 
made nothing that was made.' , So that if 
anyone were to say that the Word was 
created, he must also say that the Word 
was created through the Word's own crea- 
tive power; for without that power abso- 
lutely nothing was created. Yet such a 
statement would be manifestly absurd ; be- 
cause it is self-evident that a being must 
exist before it can act. Hence we see at 
what pains St. John is to make it clear that 
the Word is God in the strictest sense of 
the term : — that God the Son is equal to 
and consubstantial with the Father; that 
His is not an inferior god, such as the Gnos- 
tics conceived Him to be: but that He is 



86 What Think You of Christ? 

the Supreme God of heaven and earth — 
the One God besides whom there is no 
other God. 

Then to show what was the moral in- 
fluence of the Word upon the created world, 
he proceeds : "In him was life, and the life 
was the light of men." As the Word is 
the source of all physical being, so is He 
also the well-spring of all moral perfection. 
"In him was life," that is, the fullness of 
truth and holiness. As God, the Word is 
Truth Itself, is Holiness Itself, and from 
Him comes every truth that man has ever 
known, from Him comes all holiness that 
has ever adorned the souls of men. Hence 
the life of the Word is the light of men. 
The first conscious thought of Adam was a 
reflex of the Word's uncreated truth; the 
first aspiration of his heart was a response 
to the Word's eternal love. In the order of 
nature and of grace there is no light save 
that which is enkindled at this divine 
source. The Word is the Fountain and 
Focus of universal life; from Him all life 
comes, and to Him all life must return. 
He is the boundless ocean of all intellectual 
and moral truth ; He is the source and ob- 
ject of all true knowledge and love. "In 
him was life, and the life was the light of 
men/' 



The Word Incarnate. 87 

Nor was this true only whilst man re- 
mained in the state of innocence, in which 
he had been placed by the creative hand of 
God ; even after Adam and his posterity 
had gone astray from their Creator, and 
groped their way through a moral darkness 
which was of their own making, the life oi 
the Eternal Word still flowed in upon their 
souls, imparting light to their intellects and 
strength to their wills, although that light 
and strength w r ere but too often rejected 
by those who needed it most. It is to this 
that the Evangelist refers when he says : 
''And the light shineth in darkness, and the 
darkness did not comprehend it." At no 
time did God's providence and fatherly care 
abandon the descendants of sinful Adam. 
His wisdom ever spoke to them through 
the wonderful works of creation ; His love 
unceasingly appealed to them through the 
bountiful blessings that supplied their daily 
wants : — and more than this, He spoke in 
their consciences, He pleaded in their 
hearts; He manifested His merciful designs 
in their regard through prophets and seers, 
so that if they were but of good will they 
might go forth from the region of the 
shadow of death, and be enlightened by "the 
true light, which enlightencth every man 
that cometh into this world. " The Word 
of God, the Son of the Most High, who is 



■^ 



88 What Think You of Christ? 

light and life and love, was in the world 
from the very beginning; not in visible 
form, not as a God-Man, but in His in- 
visible communications to the souls of 
men, as a Fountain of truth and a Source 
of holiness. He was there in the midst of 
ignorance and corruption, even as a light 
that "shineth in darkness," but which the 
darkness did not comprehend. 

It was to open men's eyes to this divine 
Light, that a man was sent "for a witness, 
to give testimony of the light, that all men 
might believe through him." This man 
was John the Baptist. He had been fore- 
told by the prophet as "the voice of one 
crying in the desert : Prepare ye the way 
of the Lord, make straight in the wilder- 
ness the paths of our God" (Is. XL, 3) ; 
as the angel of the Lord, sent to prepare 
the way before His face (Mai. III., 1). He 
appeared in the spirit of Elias, full of zeal 
for the cause of God. He was clad in a 
garb of camel's hair; wild honey and lo- 
custs were his daily food. The desert was 
his home, the broad expanse of heaven his 
temple of worship, the hard earth his 
couch of nightly repose. Penance was 
written upon his every feature, penance 
was the burden of his every utterance. He 
taught with the authority of a prophet; he 
rebuked with the power of one commis- 



The: Word Incarnate 89 

sioned from on high. People came to him 
and listened; they listened and repented of 
their evil ways ; they repented and were 
cleansed in the baptism of penance. They 
took him for the long Expected of nations ; 
for the Christ who was to bring salvation 
unto all the people. Yet "he was not the 
light, but was to give testimony of the 
light. " As he himself put it, he only bap- 
tized with water unto penance, but there 
was even then One standing in their midst, 
who would baptize them in the Holy Ghost 
and fire (Matt. III., u). This one "was the 
true light, which enlighteneth every man 
that cometh into this world. He was in 
the world, and the world was made by him, 
and the world knew him not. He came 
unto his own and his own received him not. 
But as many as received him, he gave 
them power to be made the sons of God, to 
them that believe in his name. Who are 
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 
And this One was the Word, who in the 
beginning was with God, and who was 
God. 

Thus by a direct statement of the truth 
as revealed to him, and by an appeal to 
facts known as true, does the Evangelist 
make it clear beyond all cavil, that the 
Word was from all eternity, that He was 



90 What Think You of Christ? 

generated by the Father and therefore 
True God. It is true, in the first and 
second part of the Prologue, he does not 
state in explicit terms that the Word is 
the Son of God; but he implies it so evi- 
dently that an explicit statement would be 
superfluous. Hence in the third part, as 
we shall see presently, he calls the Word, 
without any further explanation, the 
Only Begotten of the Father. What he 
wishes to impress upon his readers above 
all else, and what for this reason he spe- 
cially emphasizes, is the fundamental fact 
that the Word is truly a divine person — 
that He is truly God, from whom all 
creatures have their being and to whom 
all must tend as the end and object of 
their existence. In this manner he pre- 
pares the way for a clear statement of the 
great truth which he has undertaken to 
set forth, namely, "that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God/' 

This truth he states in the following 
terms : "And the Word was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, 
the glory as it were of the only begotten 
of the Father), full of grace and truth." 
The same Word, who in the beginning was 
with God, and was God, was in the fullness 
of time made flesh ; or as we would express 
it in equivalent terms, was made man; for 



The Word Incarnate 91 

that is the real meaning of the Hebrew 
phrase. The Eternal Word, or the Son of 
God, was made man, not by laying aside 
His divine attributes, and much less by 
changing His divine nature into one that 
was human, but by so uniting to Himself 
a human nature that it became truly His 
own : — that He was a divine person who 
possessed at one and the same time a divine 
nature and a human nature ; so that He was 
truly God-Man, truly God-Incarnate. In 
this St. John but reiterates the same truth 
which St. Paul, as we saw in the preceding- dis- 
cussion, stated some thirty years before in 
practically the same terms, when he wrote 
to the Philippians that Christ, "who being 
in the form of God, thought it not robbery 
to be equal with God, but emptied himself, 
taking the form of a servant, being made 
in the likeness of men, and in habit found 
as a man" (II, 6. 7). The one asserts that 
the Word was from all eternity with God 
and was God, but in time was made flesh ; 
the other states that Jesus Christ, by right 
of His divine nature, was always in the 
form of God, but in time was made in the 
likeness of men. There is a slight verbal 
difference in the two statements ; but the 
doctrine contained therein is one and the 
same: — it is the first and most fundamental 
doctrine of the Christian faith ; for he only 



92 What Think You of Christ? 

is a true Christian who believes "that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." 

It is because this truth is so fundamental, 
that St. John does not rest satisfied with 
simply stating it in the sublimely simple 
words: "And the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us," but immediately 
calls attention to the fact that he and the 
other disciples saw and recognized the In- 
carnate Word's divine personality. "And 
we saw his glory," he says, "the glory as 
it were of the only begotten, of the Father, 
full of grace and truth." This glory they 
saw on Mount Tabor, when Christ was 
transfigured before them, His face shining 
like the sun and His garments being white 
as snow ; they saw it in the works of divine 
power, which He wrought in their presence, 
healing all manner of diseases and by His 
mere word raising the dea<l from their 
graves : they saw it after the dark night of 
His sufferings, when He rose by His own 
power from the tomb and appeared before 
them as the conqueror over death and 
sin: — it was the glory of the Only Begot- 
ten of the Father, who, when His mission 
of mercy was accomplished, ascended in 
triumph to heaven, there to reign forever 
upon the very throne of God, the King of 
angels and of men. By this appeal to un- 
deniable facts, the Evangelist desires to 



The Word Incarnate 93 

place his doctrine, as contained in this 
Prologue, upon a firm historic basis, so 
that no one may be led into the fatal error 
of regarding his statements as mere poetic 
effusions, practically devoid of all doctrinal 
value, but that all may have the fullest as- 
surance that they are God's own revelation 
to the children of His love. 

Furthermore, in order to make it quite 
clear that the Word Incarnate is none other 
than Jesus of Nazareth, he forthwith in* 
troduces the testimony of John the Baptist, 
who, he says, "beareth witness of him, and 
crieth out saying: This was he of whom I 
spoke. He that shall come after me, is 
preferred before me : because he was be- 
fore me. . . . And this is the testimony of 
John, when the Jews sent from Jerusalem 
priests and Levites to him, to ask him : 
Who art thou? And he confessed, and did 
not deny: and he confessed: I am not the 
Christ. . . . The next day, John saw Jesus 
coming to him, and he saith : Behold the 
Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away 
the sin of the world. This is he, of whom 
I said : After me there cometh a man, who 
is preferred before me : because he was be- 
fore me — And \ knew him not; but he who 
sent me to baptize with water, said to me : 
He upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit 
descending, and remaining upon him, he 



94 What Think You of Christ? 

it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. 
And I saw, and I gave testimony, that this 
is the Son of God" (I, 15-34). Hence all 
that the Evangelist has said about the 
Word, he himself applies, and he wishes 
his readers to apply to Jesus of Nazareth, 
of whom the Baptist bore witness that He 
"is the Son of God." He teaches indeed 
that Jesus is true man for "the Word was 
made flesh :" but he teaches also, and that 
with special emphasis, that Jesus is true 
God, consubstantial with the Father. Jesus 
is the Word Incarnate, and the Word was 
in the beginning with God, and the Word 
was God. It was His divine power that 
called all creation into being; it is His di- 
vine wisdom and love that leads all creat- 
ures to their appointed end. He is the 
beginning and end of all things ; at once 
man's creator and man's Saviour: — the 
Only Begotten of the Father, who dwelt 
among men. 

Such then is the teaching of the disciple 
whom Jesus loved. Such the faith of the 
last surviving Apostle, as stated by himself 
in the opening lines of his Gospel. Such 
the faith of him who for three years was 
associated with Jesus on terms of the most 
intimate friendship ; who saw His Master's 
every action, heard His every word, and, 
with the exception of Christ's own Blessed 



The Word Incarnate 95 

Mother, had a deeper insight into the mys- 
teries of that Master's personality than 
was ever vouchsafed to any living person. 
To Him Jesus of Nazareth is the Word 
Incarnate, and the Word Incarnate is the 
Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth. 



96 



Historical Basis of St. John's 
Faith. 

The central thought of the Prologue 
to the Fourth Gospel, is the divinty 
of the Word Incarnate. St. John is at 
great pains to make this clear to his 
readers, purposing, as is commonly be- 
lieved, to counteract certain heresies then 
springing into existence, which attributed 
to Christ a sort of inferior divinity. He 
first points to the fact that the Word had 
no beginning, but was in the bosom of the 
Father from all eternity, and that there- 
fore He does not belong to a class of beings 
that are made : — nay, he infers directly from 
this that the Word was truly divine ; for he 
concludes his first statement by saying: 
"And the Word was God." Then to set 
forth this truth in still bolder relief, he 
calls attention to the fact that the Word is 
the Creator of all things, so that "without 
him was made nothing that was made." 
From the Word, therefore, all creation has 
its being; the Word's almighty power 
called the whole world and all that it con- 
tains out of nothingness, and hence the 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 97 

Word must necessarily be identical with 
the Supreme God. In the next place, after 
briefly explaining how the Word was 
present in the world from the very be- 
ginning as the light and life of men, he 
brings before his readers the mystery of 
the Incarnation in the sublimely simple 
words : "And the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us;" immediately adding 
that the "Word made Flesh" is Jesus of 
Nazareth, of whom John the Baptist bore 
witness, that "He is the Son of God." 

In this Prologue, therefore, we have a 
clear statement of St. John's faith in the 
divinity of Christ. It is a statement as 
clear and definite and absolute as was ever 
put forth in the definitions of any 
Council. Such a statement is in itself of 
the highest doctrinal value ; for it gives us 
an insight into the hearts and minds of 
those who had come in personal contact 
with the Saviour during the years of His 
earthly existence : but its value is en- 
hanced by the fact that it is made by a 
disciple who, as his writings abundantly 
show, had penetrated most deeply into the 
mysteries of his Master's personality. He 
was the disciple whom Jesus loved, and 
from him nothing whatever had been with- 
held, either of his Master's glory and power 
or of His humiliations and infirmities. As 



98 What Think You of Christ? 

he had been a witness of the transfigura- 
tion on Mount Tabor, so was he also a 
witness of the agony in the garden of Geth- 
semane ; as he had reclined on his Master's 
bosom in the Supper Room, so did he also 
stand under the cross on Calvary. He saw 
Christ in His death, and he saw Christ in 
His risen life : — he of all others could truly 
say: "That which we have heard, which 
we have seen with our eyes, which we 
have looked upon and our hands have 
handled, of the word of life: ... we de- 
clare unto you" (I John I, 1-3). Hence as 
was stated before, "if there were nothing 
else to the purpose in the whole New Tes- 
tament, the first fourteen verses of the 
Fourth Gospel would be sufficient to per- 
suade a believer in Holy Scripture that 
Jesus is absolutely God." 

However as it is not the purpose of these 
discussions to set forth the divinity of 
Christ for those only who believe in Holy 
Scripture, or who accept Holy Scripture 
as a book inspired by God; but also for 
such as reject the very idea of inspiration 
and are willing only to consider the 
Sacred Writings from an historical point 
of view, it is necessary to examine the 
arguments which St. John advances for the 
profession of faith prefixed to his Gospel. 
That he did not mean to impose his faith 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 99 

upon others without placing before them 
the proofs upon which that faith rested, is 
quite evident from the Prologue itself, 
which concludes with the significant words: 
"And we saw his glory, the glory as it 
were of the only begotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth. " Hence in the 
present chapter we shall consider some of 
these proofs which induced the Evangelist 
to believe and to testify "that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God." I say some of 
these proofs, for if we w r ould consider theni 
all, we should have to examine the whole 
Gospel, as there is hardly a chapter in the 
entire narrative that does not advance 
some evidence of Christ's divine person- 
ality. 

And here I might remark that St. John 
seems to be very partial to a class of argu- 
ments w r hich modern Rationalists consider 
the only ones that have real weight. In 
these days of deep psychological research, 
we are constantly referred to the con- 
sciousness of Christ. The one question 
that is ever upon the lips of Bible critics 
is, What did Christ think of Himself? 
What manner of man did He consider 
Himself to be? What precise claim did 
He put forward as regarded His relation 
to the Father? Could we but be certain 
of this, they say, our minds would be set 



100 What Think You of Christ? 

at rest forever; because if Christ really be- 
lieved that He was God, and if He un- 
doubtedly claimed that He was God, then 
we have no choice but to accept and 
worship Him as such. For a more en- 
lightened mind than Christ's was never 
found in mortal man, and greater holiness 
than Christ's never adorned a human soul ; 
and it is, they tell us, plainly inconceivable 
that a man of His intellectual eminence, 
and of His moral perfection, should either 
have mistaken His own personal identity 
or should have claimed for Himself a 
dignity which He knew was not His. So 
argue our modern Rationalists, and so like- 
wise St. John seems to have argued, al- 
though, unlike these Rationalists, he did 
not rest his conclusion upon this argument 
alone. 

As a first instance of this argumentation, 
we may take what St. John has recorded 
in the fifth chapter of his Gospel. On a 
certain festival day Jesus came to Jerusa- 
lem, and there at the Pool of Probatica 
He found a man who had been suffering 
from an infirmity for thirty-eight years. 
"Him when Jesus saw lying, and knew 
that he had been now a long time, he saith 
to him: Wilt thou be made whole? The 
infirm man answered him: Sir, I have no 
man, when the water is troubled, to put 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 101 

me into the pond. For whilst I corne, 
another goeth down before me. Jesus 
saith to him : Arise, take up thy bed and 
walk. And immediately the man was 
made whole: and he took up his bed and 
walked. And it was Sabbath that day" 
(V, 1-9). 

Xow when the Jews learned what Jesus 
had done, they were incensed against Him ; 
because He had healed on the Sabbath day, 
which according to their views and tradi- 
tions was against the law. Jesus did not 
excuse Himself, or argue that in case of 
necessity the law of keeping holy the Sab- 
bath might be dispensed with, but He 
simply stated that He as the Son of God 
was Lord of the Sabbath, and that there- 
fore He might set aside the law according 
to His own good pleasure. "My father," 
He tells the murmuring crowd, "worketh 
until now ; and I work." That is to say, 
"God, who is my Father, is not bound by 
the law regulating the observance of the 
Sabbath and neither am I ; because as His 
Son, I share in all His rights and preroga- 
tives. " When the Jews heard this, "they 
sought to kill him," says the Evangelist, 
"because he did not only break the Sab- 
bath, 'but also said God was his Father, 
making himself equal to God" 08). ^ s 
they understood Him, Jesus claimed that 



102 What Think You of Christ? 

He was the Son of God in such a sense 
that He Himself was a divine person, and 
therefore True God, having the same 
divine nature as Jehovah. They did not 
believe that His claim was true, yet what 
that claim was they understood perfectly 
well. It was a clear and open assertion of 
His divinity, and therefore they sought to 
kill Him; because to usurp the place of 
God was blasphemy, which according to 
their law must be punished with death. 

Of course, the objection might be raised 
that the Jews misinterpreted Christ's 
words ; that they attached a meaning to 
Christ's words which He did not intend 
to convey: yet such an objection would be 
wholly unfounded, as is clearly shown by 
the context. For when Jesus saw that He 
had been understood to claim equality with 
the Father, He did not tell them that they 
had mistaken His meaning, but, on the 
contrary, He insisted that they had under- 
stood Him rightly and that His claim was 
true. He tells them plainly: "What things 
soever the Father doth, these the Son also 
doth in like manner. . . For as the Father 
raiseth the dead, and giveth life: so the 
Son also giveth life to whom he will" 
(21). As if He had said: "You accuse me 
of blasphemy, because I claim to be equal 
to the Father; yet why should I not be 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 103 

equal to the Father in nature, when I am 
equal to Him in power? Whatever the 
Father can do, I also can do. As the 
Father is the source and origin of life, so 
am I ; as the Father raises up the dead, so 
do I ; as the Father is omnipotent, so am 
I : if therefore I am equal to Him in 
power, does it not logically follow that I 
am equal to Him in nature? If I do the 
works that only God can do, am I guilty 
of blasphemy when I say that I am God? 
Yes, I claim to be God, and my works 
show that my claim is true." And to bring 
the truth of this claim home to them, He 
continues: "If I bear witness to myself, my 
witness is not true," that is, you will not 
receive it as true, because it is given by 
myself. "There is another that beareth 
witness of me ; and I know that the wit- 
ness which he witnesseth of me is true. 
You sent to John, and he gave testimony 
to the truth. But I receive not testimony 
from any man : but I say these things that 
you may be saved. . . But I have a greater 
testimony than that of John : for the works 
which the Father hath given me to perfect; 
the works themselves, which I do, give 
testimony of me, that the Father hath sent 
me. And the Father himself who hath 
sent me, hath given testimony of me" 



104 What Think You of Christ? 

Thus He not only claims that He is 
God, one in nature with the Father, but 
He severely rebukes the Jews for their in- 
credulity in regard to His claim. They 
knew what works He had done, and ordi- 
nary common sense ought to have told 
them that such works could not be done 
by any man. He had shown to evidence 
that He was absolute master over life and 
death : — at a mere word from His mouth, 
at a mere act of His will, the most in- 
veterate diseases were healed on the in- 
stant; nay, the very dead rose from their 
graves. These works had been pointed out 
by the prophets of old as the infallible 
credentials whereby the Messiah was to 
prove His divine mission, as the outward 
signs whereby all might know that He 
was "God the Mighty/' The Jews had 
seen these works, they had heard Christ's 
claim, yet they believed neither the one 
nor the other; they were so steeped in 
worldliness, they were so overruled by 
selfish ambition, that their eyes were 
blinded to the most striking manifestation 
of the truth. It was on account of this 
culpable blindness that Christ added so 
pointedly : "Search the scriptures, for you 
think in them to have life everlasting : and 
the same are they that give testimony of 
me. . . Think not that I will accuse you 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 105 

to the Father. There is one that accuseth 
you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if 
you did believe Moses, you would perhaps 
believe me also : for he wrote of me. But 
if you do not believe his writings, how will 
you believe my words?" (39-47). 

Again, to make it doubly clear to them 
that His equality with the Father implied 
nothing less than that He was absolutely 
God, He tells them then and there that He 
is entitled to divine honors and that men 
must worship Him as their God. "For," 
He says, "neither doth the Father judge 
any man, but hath given all judgment to 
the Son. That all men may honour the 
Son, as they honour the Father. He who 
honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the 
Father, who hath sent Him" (22, 23). To 
honour Jehovah as the one and sole God 
of heaven and earth was the special call- 
ing and the very life of the Jewish people. 
The Temple at Jerusalem was the centre 
of His worship; there the blood of victims 
flowed almost without ceasing; there the 
Jews were required by law to offer the 
firstlings of the flock and the first fruits of 
the field in recognition of His supreme 
dominion ; to neglect that worship drew 
after it the severest penalties, to dishonour 
Jehovah meant death; He was to them the 
Lord God of Sabaoth, the Most High, 



106 What Think You of Christ? 

whose name they did not dare to utter: — 
and yet Jesus tells them that they must 
honour Him as they honour Jehovah ; they 
must make Him the object of religious 
worship ; they must adore Him as their 
God. No wonder that the Jews sought to 
kill Him ; for logically they could do only 
one of two things, either acknowledge His 
claim that He was God, and then they 
must needs worship Him as they wor- 
shipped Jehovah, or deny His claim as an 
unjust usurpation of divine rights, and 
then they must brand Him as a blas- 
phemer, who according to the law should 
be stoned to death. In their worldliness 
and pride, the first alternative was not to 
be thought of, and therefore they em- 
braced the second, seeking to kill Him, 
"because he did not only break the Sab- 
bath, but also said God was his Father, 
making himself equal to God." 

Another incident very much like the 
present, but which brings out Christ's 
claim even more strongly, is recorded by 
the Evangelist in the tenth chapter. In the 
beginning of that chapter, Christ speaks 
of Himself as the Good Shepherd, setting 
forth in language the most touching, how 
He loves His sheep even to the sacrifice 
of His life. "I am the good shepherd/' 
He tells the Jews who are gathered about 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 107 

Him, ''The good shepherd giveth his life 
for his sheep. . . I am the good shep- 
herd ; and I know mine, and mine know 
me. As the Father knoweth me, and I 
know the Father: and I lay down my life 
for my sheep. And other sheep I have 
that are not of this fold : them also I must 
bring, and they shall hear my voice, and 
there shall be one fold and one shepherd. 
Therefore doth the Father love me : be- 
cause I lay down my life, that I may take 
it again. Xo man taketh it away from 
me : but I lay it down of myself, and I 
have power to lay it down ; and I have 
power to take it up again" (11-18). When 
the Jews heard this, they began disputing 
among themselves; some being scanda- 
lized at His words, whilst others were in 
admiration of the same. Some said : "He 
hath a devil, and is mad;" but others main- 
tained: "These are not the words of one 
that hath a devil : can a devil open the 
eyes of the blind?" (19-21). And they 
could not come to an agreement concern- 
ing Christ and His doctrine. 

In this perplexity, they addressed them- 
selves directly to Christ, and said to Him: 
"How long dost thou hold our souls in 
suspense? If thou be the Christ, tell us 
plainly" (24). It was in a manner a most 
unreasonable request ; because Christ had 



108 What Think You of Christ? 

told them over and over again, not only 
that He was the Christ, that is. the Mes- 
siah, but also that He was their God, 
whom they were in conscience bound to 
honour even as they honoured the Father. 
In fact, so clear and definite had been 
His statements that on account of them 
they had unhesitatingly accused Him of 
blasphemy, because, they said. He made 
Himself equal to God. Hence instead of 
answering them directly. He first calls 
their attention to their unreasonable in- 
credulity, which neither His words nor His 
works seemed able to overcome. "I speak 
to you." He tells them, "and you believe 
me not : the works that I do in the name 
of my Father, they give testimony of me. 
But you do not believe, because you are 
not of my sheep 25-26). 

It was a sharp, though well merited re- 
buke, and it ought to have opened the eyes 
of these unbelieving Jews to the danger- 
of the path which they were following. 
Christ tells them plainly that they shall 
have no share in the fruits of the Re- 
demption, because they refuse to listen to 
His voice. He will lay down His life for 
His sheep: He will make salvation pos- 
sible for all : but only such as are of good 
will, of honest and sincere purpose, can 
profit by the sacrificial outpouring of His 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 109 

blood. On another occasion He had told 
the Scribes and Pharisees that many 
should come from the East and the West 
and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, 
and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven : but 
the children of the kingdom, that is, the 
unbelieving Jews, should be cast out into 
the exterior darkness ; and now He re- 
peats that same warning, by telling them 
that they are not of His sheep. 

Having thus rebuked them for their in- 
credulity, He proceeds to give them the 
answer which they had demanded. And 
first of all He points out to them that He 
has power to keep His followers from all 
harm, and to bestow upon them eternal 
life. "My sheep," He says, "hear my voice: 
and I know them, and they follow me. And 
I give them life everlasting ; and they shall 
not perish forever, and no man shall pluck 
them out of my hand." The Jews knew 
well that the only one who could confer 
the recompense of life everlasting was Je- 
hovah, whom they worshipped as the one 
True God of heaven and earth. Hence 
they could not fail to understand that 
Christ again urged the identical claim 
which He had put before them on a for- 
mer occasion. Nor did lie leave them 
in any doubt about this; for He immedi- 
ately added : "That which my Father hath 



110 What Think You of Christ? 

given me, is greater than all: and no one 
can snatch them out of the hand of my 
Father. I and the Father are one." That 
is to say, "the reason why I can safe- 
guard my followers,, and give them ever- 
lasting life, is simply this, that I have the 
same power as my Father, of whom you 
say that He is your God. Xo one can 
snatch them out of His hand, because He 
is the Lord of all : neither can anyone 
snatch them out of my hand, because I am 
also the Lord of all. And I. no less than 
my Father, am the Lord of all. because "I 
and the Father are one." 

They had asked Him to tell them plainly, 
whether He was the Christ: but His 
answer went beyond their question. He 
not only acknowledged that He was the 
Christ, that is, the promised Messiah, but 
He told them with emphasis that He was 
also their God. For when He said. "I and 
the Father are one." He could mean noth- 
ing else than that He had the same divine 
nature as the Father. It was this oneness 
of nature between Him and the Father that 
was the source of His divine power. He 
could safeguard His followers, because the 
Father could : He could bestow life ever- 
lasting, because the Father could : — He 
could do all that the Father could do, be- 
cause He and the Father were one : — they 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. Ill 

were two distinct divine persons, but they 
were one God, because both had the same 
divine nature. 

There was no misunderstanding this 
statement ; nor did the Jews misunderstand 
it : for when they heard this, says the Evan- 
gelist, they "took up stones to stone Him." 
Jesus, however, restrained them by that ab- 
solute power which He always could exer- 
cise at will, even over His most relentless 
enemies ; and when they had quieted down 
somewhat, He said to them: "Many good 
works I have shewed you of my Father ; 
for which of those works do you stone me?" 
He knew quite well why they sought to 
kill Him, but in His compassionate love for 
even the most hardened sinners, He wished 
to offer them another opportunity of view- 
ing His claim in the light shed upon it by 
the works of love and mercy and power 
which He had wrought in their midst. He 
had constantly gone about doing good to 
all ; He had healed them when they were 
sick ; He had fed them when they were 
hungry ; He had consoled them when they 
were afflicted and in sorrow ; He had 
spoken to them of the love and mercy of 
God, and had encouraged them to strive 
after the eternal joys of heaven by lead- 
ing a life of virtue and contentment: — from 
His first appearance in their midst even 



112 What Think You of Christ? 

to the present moment. His life had been 
but an uninterrupted manifestation of the 
infinite goodness of God, and now He asks 
them, not in anger as He might well have 
done, but in pity and compassion: ''For 
which of those good works do vou stone 

Had the Jews been sincere in their re- 
quest that He should tell them plainly 
whether He was the Christ, this reference 
to His works of mercy and love ought cer- 
tainly have induced them to give His claim 
due consider but like so many thou- 

sand others, who have ever since followed 
their examples, they shut their eyes to all 
reason and persisted in persecuting Him as 
a blasphemer. Hence they answered: "For 
a good work we stone thee not, but for 
blasphemy: and because that thou, being a 
man, makest thyself God" (33). His good 
works they could not deny; they were 
known to all the people: every hamlet and 
bore witness to His mission of mercy 
and love. N :: yet could they or did they 
deny the works of divine power which He 
had wrought in the sight of all: — the blind 
to whom He had given sight, the lepers 
whom He had cleansed, the dead whom He 
had raised to life : — all these were living wit- 
nesses to the absolute dominion which He 
possessed over the whole realm of na- 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 113 

ture. Xo, His works they could not deny ; 
but neither would they accept them as cre- 
dentials of His divine mission ; they pre- 
ferred to ascribe them to the agency of the 
devil, although no man in his sane mind 
could seriously credit the devil with works 
that breathed the very spirit of God. For 
a good work, therefore, they would not 
stone Him, but for blasphemy, because He, 
being a man, made Himself God. 

One would think that after this failure 
to bring them to a more reasonable frame 
of mind, Christ would have left them to 
their fate and gone His way ; but no, as He 
claimed to be God, so did He also act as 
God. He had come to save all, and there- 
fore He would do all in His power to make 
that salvation effective. Hence He argued 
with them, patiently trying to show them 
from the law which they so highly es- 
teemed that His claim was perfectly just. 
Answering their accusation. He said: "Is 
it not written in your law: 1 said you arc 
gods? If he called them gods to whom the 
word of God was spoken, and the scripture 
cannot be broken : do you say of him whom 
the Father hath sanctified and sent into the 
world: Thou blasphemest, because 1 said, 
I am the Son of God?" The Jews were in- 
censed against Christ because He claimed 
to be God, yet in their Sacred Books their 



114 What Think You of Christ? 

own judges were called gods; how much 
more truly and justly could He make use 
of that name, as He was the only begotten 
of the Father, whereas the judges were 
only men? It is true, these judges were 
called gods in an improper sense, being 
merely God's representatives in their office 
of dispensing justice; whilst He claimed to 
be God in the strict sense of the term, but 
in this He w r as justified by the fact that He 
had the same divine nature as the Father. 
And then to bring home to them the un- 
deniable truth that He was one with the 
Father, He once more appeals to His works, 
saying: "If I do not the works of my 
Father, believe me not. But if I do, though 
you will not believe me, believe the works : 
that you may know and believe that the 
Father is in me, and I in the Father" (34- 
39). Yet it was all in vain; no matter what 
He might do or what He might say, they 
would not have Him as their God, and so 
they again sought to apprehend Him, but 
He turned away from them, deeply grieved, 
as we may well suppose, at their blindness 
and hardness of heart. 

In these tw r o instances, as in so many 
others recorded by St. John, Jesus claimed 
openly and with emphasis that He was the 
Son of God, that He was equal to the 
Father, and that He was True God. He 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 115 

rested His claim not only upon His own 
consciousness, but also upon testimony that 
was accessible to all and that could not be 
called in question by any man of sincere 
purpose. The prophets had foretold His 
coming; they had outlined His life and 
character, and their predictions were be- 
ing fulfilled point by point until the pro- 
phetic vision had become an actual living 
reality. His works were such as only God 
could do, and they were wrought for the 
express purpose to accredit His divine mis- 
sion and to show forth the fullness of His 
Godhead. Hence He well said, "I have a 
greater testimony than that of John ;" His 
divine mission and personality were at- 
tested by God Himself, who cannot be 
deceived nor yet deceive others. Any man 
in his right mind ought to know that noth- 
ing short of God's omnipotent power could 
call the dead from their graves or by a 
mere act of the will give sight to persons 
that were born blind. Yet Jesus had done 
all this; He had done it in the presence of 
hundreds and of thousands, and that for 
the express purpose of showing that He 
was God. Hence if His claim had not been 
legitimate, if He had falsely given Himself 
out as God whereas He was only man, 
God Himself must be accused of having 
testified to a lie, and God Himself must be 



116 What Think You of Christ? 

held responsible for the subsequent idolatry. 
Truly, He has "a -greater testimony than 
that of John." 

Now, with these facts before us, need we 
be surprised that St. John should have pre- 
fixed to his Gospel that magnificent pro- 
fession of faith, which is usually spoken of 
as the Prologue? Had he not every rea- 
son to say: "In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God"? And had he not 
every reason to add : "And the Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we 
saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only 
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and 
truth?" Rationalists tell us that if they 
could be certain that Christ claimed He 
was God, they also would believe in His 
Godhead; hence even if St. John had be- 
gun as a Rationalist, he must logically 
have ended as a firm believer in Christ's 
divinity. For he was associated with Christ 
for three years ; he was present on every 
occasion when Christ claimed that He was 
God; he heard not only the claim itself, 
but also the reason which Christ advanced 
for the truth of His claim ; and therefore 
if he believed Christ to be honest and sin- 
cere, if he considered Him to be mentally 
sane and endowed with ordinary common 
sense, he could do nothing else but accept 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 117 

Christ's explicit declaration, repeated over 
and over again, that He was True God and 
consubstantial with the Father. He had 
listened to the words of wisdom that ever 
flowed from Christ's sacred lips, and there- 
fore he knew that Christ was not labouring 
under a misconception ; he had been a con- 
stant witness of Christ's holiness of life 
and singleness of purpose, and therefore he 
was convinced that Christ was not a de- 
ceiver : — hence if any man's w r ord concern- 
ing his own identity could be admitted, 
then he must admit the claim of Christ. 
An unbiased mind could not do less. 

Furthermore, it w r as not only upon 
Christ's consciousness, as manifested in the 
direct statement of His claims, that St. 
John's faith in his Master's divinity was 
based. As a reasonable man, whose mind 
was not biased by preconceived philosophi- 
cal notions, he could not help realizing 
what was the bearing of Christ's works 
of divine power upon the validity of His 
claim. He was the daily witness of deeds, 
which no unprejudiced mind could con- 
ceive of as being merely human, or of being 
the effects of some occult power contained 
within the limits of the finite. He knew what 
it meant, when Jesus said to the disciples of 
the Baptist: "Go and relate to John what 
you have heard and seen : the blind see, the 



118 What Think You of Christ? 

lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the 
deaf hear, the dead rise again, to the poor 
the Gospel is preached'' (Luke, VII, 22). 
No man that was not sent by God, or who 
falsely claimed that he was a divine person, 
could possess such unlimited powers, or 
could be allowed by God to use them in 
confirmation of his claim. St. John be- 
lieved, as every sane man must believe, that 
there is an infinitely holy God, who cannot 
be made the abettor of evil. He had stood 
at the grave of Lazarus, where Jesus 
openly declared that He would call the dead 
man back to life, in order that all might be- 
lieve in His own divine mission. He had 
heard the voice of omnipotence bid Lazarus 
to come forth, and he had seen that same 
Lazarus arise from the corruption of the 
grave and come forth a living man. He had 
heard Christ say to the roaring tempest and 
the tossing waves, "Be still," and he saw 
how there was immediately a great calm, 
He had seen Christ stretch forth His hand 
in blessing over five barley loaves and two 
fishes, and forthwith there was an abun- 
dance of food to fill five thousand hungry 
men. Day after day, for three long years, 
he had seen Jesus exercise an unlimited and 
absolute power over all the forces of nature, 
and he had heard over and over again how 
that same Jesus pointed to these works as 



Historic Basis of St. John's Faith. 119 

a proof of His divinity ; hence as a reason- 
able man, who was willing to see the truth 
and to give testimony to the same, he could 
do nothing else but believe in Christ and 
adore Him as his God, and then be&r wit- 
ness to Him in the Gospel which he found 
it advisable to write. 



120 



The Christ of the Early Church* 

That the writings of the New Testament 
bear unequivocal testimony to the divinity 
of Christ is, I think, sufficiently clear from 
what has been said in the preceding chap- 
ters. Even the three earliest Evangelists 
were so deeply impressed by the divine 
personality of the Saviour, that they did not 
hesitate to make it the foundation of their 
narrative, in as much as they constantly 
represent Christ as holding a position of 
independent and absolute authority that be- 
longs to God alone The same must be said 
of St Paul, who moreover, as occasion re- 
quired, made explicit declaration of Christ's 
divinity, and enforced that declaration by 
arguments which no unbiased mind could 
refuse to accept. That a similar position is 
taken by the other New Testament writers, 
such as St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, and 
the Author of the Acts, a mere reading of 
their respective writings is sufficient to 
convince anyone who sincerely wishes to 
learn the truth. And lastly St. John, the 
disciple whom Jesus loved, put the whole 
matter in so clear a light, that no one has 
as yet dared to suggest any other inter- 
pretation than the one that was accepted 



The Christ of the Early Church. 121 

from the very first, namely, that "J esus * s 
the Christ, the Son of God." Hence who- 
soever admits that the New Testament has 
real historical value, must also admit that 
Christ is truly a divine person — a God In- 
carnate. 

Now this being the case, one would nat- 
urally suppose that the divinity of Christ 
was one of those fundamental truths which 
the Church from the very beginning of her 
existence put before her children as an in- 
dubitable fact of divine revelation. For 
how can it possibly be supposed that the 
Apostles and first disciples of Christ should 
have considered and adored him as their 
God, and not have communicated that faith 
to their converts and established that wor- 
ship in the various communities which 
they founded? Such a supposition is on 
the face of it most unreasonable, and can- 
not be made except by persons who are 
determined to rule belief in Christ's di- 
vinity out of the world at all hazards. Yet 
Rationalists and Modernists tell us that the 
Early Church did not know her own mind 
in regard to Christ's divine personality. 
They will have it that during the first three 
centuries of her existence, the Church al- 
lowed her children to look upon Christ as 
a sort of inferior deity, who was indeed 
above all created things, yet was not strict- 



122 What Think You of Christ? 

ly and absolutely divine as was God the 
Father. It was, they say, only at the Coun- 
cil of Nice, held in the year 325, that be- 
lief in Christ's absolute divinity was re- 
quired of all who wished to become mem- 
bers of the Church. Until then the Church 
had advanced no definite view concerning 
the matter, and the faithful were left more 
or less to their own speculations. 

In view of this extraordinary statement, 
it seems necessary to examine somewhat 
in detail, as far as that can be done in one 
short chapter, the records that have come 
down to us of those early times, and deter- 
mine whether or not the Church then 
taught, as she teaches to-day, that Christ is 
True God of True God, consubstantial with 
the Father. This may at first sight appear 
to be a rather formidable undertaking, yet 
as you will notice in the course of the dis- 
cussion, the matter may easily be handled in 
such a way as to make it intelligible to all 
and to derive from it very satisfactory re- 
sults. 

As is readily admitted on all hands, and 
as is quite evident from the nature of the 
case, the faith of the Church, at any given 
time, can be ascertained from her teaching, 
from her worship, and from the persecu- 
tions which her children are made to en- 
dure on account of their religious belief. 



The Christ of the Early Church. 123 

Any one of these three sources of informa- 
tion is of itself sufficient to remove all 
doubt as regards the most essential and 
fundamental points, and if they are all 
taken together, the entire doctrinal system 
must needs be revealed in all its fullness. 
It is therefore along these lines that we shall 
make our inquiries in the present instance. 
In regard to the first source it may be 
remarked, that the teaching of the Early 
Church appears mainly in her symbols, or 
professions of faith, in the writings of her 
representative men, and in the manner in 
which she dealt with heretics. From the 
very first it was the custom to require of 
converts a profession of faith, which was 
to be made before they received baptism. 
To facilitate this profession, and to secure 
uniformity, a set formula was adopted 
which contained the most fundamental 
truths then taught by the church. The 
formula which was used in the first 
three centuries has been preserved for us, 
at least in part, by St. Justin (Apol. I, 61, 
i), by Tertullian (De Praescript. C. 36), 
and by St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. I, 10), all 
of whom lived and wrote in the second 
century. It is now commonly acknowl- 
edged by critics that this formula dates 
from a period not later than the end of the 
first century, and although it seems to have 



124 What Think You of Christ? 

had its origin in Rome, in substance at 
least it was common to all churches both 
in the East and in the West. Now, in this 
formula, we read: "I believe in God the 
Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His 
only Son, our Lord, who was born bv the 
Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary" (Denz. 
I, 2). Hence every one who wished to be 
admitted into the Church, had to make an 
explicit declaration of faith in the divine 
sonship of Christ. He must believe that 
Christ is the Only Son of God : not there- 
fore a son in the sense that all just men 
are the children of God, but in a very 
special sense, which made Him one in na- 
ture with the Father. The term, "His 
only Son," as here employed, is identical 
with the expression used by St. Paul, when 
he wrote to the Romans that Christ was 
God's "own Son," and with the statement 
found in St. John's Gospel, that Christ is 
"the Only Begotten of the Father." It is 
identical with the corresponding article of 
faith in our own Creed, for we say to-day 
as did the Christians of the first three cen- 
turies : "I believe in God the Father Al- 
mighty, Creator of heaven and earth : and 
in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord : 
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost. 
born of the Virgin Mary." Eighteen hun- 
dred years separate us from these early con- 



Tpie Christ of the Early Church. 125 

verts to the faith, but the faith in Christ's 
divinity and its outward expression have 
remained unaltered. As we believe that 
Christ is True God, consubstantial with 
the Father, so did they, and so did the 
Church that brought them forth to Christ 
in baptism. They were baptized, "In the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost" (Didache, c. 7), and they 
publicly professed their faith in the three 
divine persons of the One Triune God. 
Modern theorizers may attempt to deny 
this, but the testimony of history is un- 
questionably against them, and as they 
themselves never tire of telling us, the testi- 
mony of history must be accepted by all 
reasonable men. 

Not less convincing than the testimony 
of this early symbol is the unanimous 
teaching of the Church's most representa- 
tive men as preset ved to us in their writ- 
ings. Thus at the end of the first century 
St. Clement of Rome reminds the Corin- 
thians that Jesus Christ is True God as 
had been foretold in the Second Psalm, 
where Jehovah is represented as saying to 
the Messiah : "Thou art my Son, this day 
have I begotten Thee" (c. 36). A few years 
later, St. Ignatius of Antioch calls Jesus 
Christ "my God," "our God," "Jesus Christ 
our God," he writes to the Ephesians, "was 



126 What Think You of Christ? 

carried in the womb of Mary" (c. 18). St. 
Justin Martyr, who wrote about forty years 
later, maintains that the Word is the First 
born of God, and as such True God ; that He 
appeared in the Old Testament as the God 
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (I Apol. 63) ; 
and that the reality of His sonship is of it- 
self sufficient evidence of His true divinity 
(Ibid.). Towards the end of the second cen- 
tury St. Athanagoras of Athens writes in 
his Apology to the Roman Emperor, "Not 
only is the Father God, but also the Son 
and the Holy Spirit. In these three divine 
persons there is unity of Godhead, and in 
this unity of Godhead there is distinction 
of persons (c. 20). About the same time 
St. Irenaeus of Lyons argues, "If Christ 
forgives sins, if Christ is Mediator be- 
tween God and man, this is because He is 
really a divine person" (Adv. Haer. Ill, 9, 
2). Similar language is used by Tertullian 
of Carthage, by St. Hippolyte of Rome, by 
Origen and Clement of Alexandria, by 
Melito of Sardis, by St. Methodius of Tyre, 
and in fact by every writer of that period 
who had occasion to refer to this matter, 
and whose writings have been preserved. 
Among those w r ho made profession of being 
members of the Church of Christ, there is 
not a dissentient voice as regards the Sa- 
viour's divine personality. They one and 



The Christ of the Early Church. 127 

all confess and teach that He is the Son of 
God, one with the Father in nature and 
distinct from Him as a person. 

Now think for a moment what this 
means. Taken together, these writers rep- 
resent every rank and station in the Church 
as it then existed: — some were bishops, 
others priests, others simple laymen. Some, 
were engaged in the education of the 
young ; others carried on the work of evan- 
gelization ; others again followed the ordi- 
nary pursuits of life. Some were highly edu- 
cated, whilst others had but little more in- 
formation than the common people. Fur- 
thermore, they represent practically all the 
different countries and nations that had in 
any way received the Gospel. Europe, 
Asia and Africa, which made up the then 
known world, supplied each their quota of 
witnesses to the faith, as it was then taught 
by the Church and held by the people. 
Hence their teaching is necessarily a true 
index of the teaching of the Church herself, 
and their faith must needs have been identi- 
cal with the faith of the Church. 

That this was really the case, appears 
moreover to evidence from the manner in 
which the Church dealt with heretics, or 
persons who presumed to call in question 
Christ's true and absolute divinity. Tims 
when toward the end of the first centurv. 



128 What Think You of Christ? 

a certain Cerinthus asserted that Jesus of 
Nazareth was not the Son of God, but only 
of Mary and Joseph, and that therefore He 
was not True God, the whole Church rose 
up in arms against him, and he was shunned 
by the faithful as a blasphemer and an 
apostate (S. Irenaeus, Ad. Haer. V). It 
.was the same when the Gnostics, and later 
on the Arians assigned to Christ a middle 
place between the highest angels and the 
Supreme God, and thus made of Him a 
sort of inferior deity. The entire Church 
branded them forthwith as renegades, who 
had apostatized from the faith preached by 
the Apostles. So fundamental did the Early 
Church consider the belief in Christ's abso- 
lute divinity, that a denial of it ipso facto 
separated a man from her communion. It 
was then even as it is now, the mark of a 
true Christian was instinctively looked for 
in a man's unhesitating belief that Christ 
was true God. As a modern writer, who is 
not a Catholic, well puts it, "the truth of 
Christ's absolute Godhead was beyond 
doubt the very central feature of the teach- 
ing of the ante-Nicene Church, even when 
Church teachers had not yet recognized all 
that it necessarily involved, and had not yet 
elaborated the accurate statement of its 
relationship to other truths around it." 
(Liddon, p. 432). To say that the Church 



The Christ of the Early Church. 129 

had not made up her mind on this funda- 
mental point of doctrine, argues either a 
colossal ignorance of history, or a state of 
intellectual blindness that finds its explana- 
tion only in the most unreasonable preju- 
dice. In those early days, men might use, 
as in fact they did, many vague and mis- 
leading expressions in their efforts to ex- 
plain the mutual relations of God the 
Father and God the Son, but that the cen- 
tral fact of the Son's true and absolute 
divinity was ever called in question by a 
sincere church member, or that it was a 
matter of doubt to the Church herself, is his- 
torically false and cannot be truthfully 
maintained by anyone who has carefully read 
the records of the ante-Nicene Church. The 
very fact that the faithful instinctively re- 
garded every denial of Christ's divinity as 
an apostasy from God, puts this beyond all 
doubt. 

And what we thus learn from the teaching 
of the Early Church, as expressed in her 
symbols, in the writings of her most rep- 
resentative men, and in her firm opposition 
to heretics, stands out with even greater 
clearness in the worship which she paid to 
Christ and which she demanded from all 
the faithful. As in her baptismal rite she 
consecrated her children to the One Triune 
God, the Father, the Son and the Holy 



130 What Think You of Christ? 

Ghost, so did she gather these same chil- 
dren around her altars, bidding them to 
unite with her in the solemn act of adora- 
tion which had for its direct object, not only 
the Father and the Holy Spirit, but also the 
Son, Christ Jesus, who in His human na- 
ture had suffered and died for the sins of 
the world. A document written toward the 
end of the first century, and known to stu- 
dents as the Didache, clearly states that the 
Christians came together every Sunday 
morning for the purpose of offering sacri- 
fice to the Godhead by the oblation of 
Christ's body and blood, as the Saviour had 
taught and commanded His disciples at the 
Last Supper (cc. 9, 14). The same prac- 
tice is stated, and to some extent described, 
by St. Justin in his First Apology (n. 67), 
and by Pliny the Younger in his report to 
the Emperor Trajan, who moreover adds 
that on these occasions the Christians were 
in the habit of offering prayers and singing 
hymns to Christ as their God (Epist. 97). 
It was in fact the celebration of Mass, in all 
essentials the same as observed to-day in 
the Catholic Church all the world over. 
What were the different prayers .used on 
these occasions, cannot now be determined 
in detail ; yet two of them have come down 
to us almost unchanged, and both pay di- 
vine honors to Christ. The first of these 



The Christ of the Early Church. 131 

is the "Tersanctus," or "Holy, holy, holy, 
Lord God of Saboath," part of which 
prayer every Catholic priest recites to-day 
at the end of the Preface in the celebration 
of Mass. The other one is that beautiful 
hymn known as the "Gloria in Excelsis," 
which is said at the beginning of the Mass 
on all feast days of the year. This, more- 
over, as we learn from contemporary 
records, formed the ordinary morning 
prayer of the primitive Christians ; and what 
a beautiful prayer it is ! "How wonder- 
fully does it blend the appeal to our Lord's 
human sympathies with the confession of 
his divine prerogatives: 'O Lord God, 
Lamb of God, Son of the Father, That tak- 
est away the sins of the world, have mercy 
upon us.' How thrilling is the burst of 
praise, which at last drowns the plaintive 
notes of entreaty that have preceded it, and 
hails Jesus glorified on His throne in the 
heights of heaven! Tor Thou only art 
holy ; Thou only art the Lord ; Thou only, 
O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most 
high in the glory of God the Father' " 
(Liddon, p. 394). It is an explicit profes- 
sion of faith in Christ the Redeemer, not 
only as man, but also as God — as a God In- 
carnate. 

Closely related to this beautiful hymn, 
which is technically known as the Major 



132 What Think You of Christ? 

Doxology, or the greater hymn of praise, 
is another prayer, which is usually desig- 
nated as the Minor Doxology, or the shorter 
hymn of praise. This too, was in common 
use from the very beginning of Christianity, 
even as it is used to-day by every devout 
Christian. Its wording is: ''Glory be to 
the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy 
Ghost." In this one and the same glory is 
given to the Father, to the Son, and to the 
Holy Spirit, and therefore all three are 
equally worshiped as divine persons. It is 
an implicit profession of faith in the mys- 
tery of the Most Holy Trinity, and as such 
the formula itself is necessarily expres- 
sive of the belief of those who piously use it. 
Hence as it was used from the very earliest 
times, both by the learned and the un- 
learned, it is a standing witness to the faith 
of the primitive Christians. As they were 
baptized in the name of the Triune God, so 
did they publicly profess their faith in the 
equal Godhead of all three divine persons. 
As one would naturally suppose, this wor- 
ship of Christ, as well as the common prac- 
tice of addressing prayers to Him, finds 
frequent mention in the writing of the 
Early Fathers. Thus St. Ignatius of An- 
tioch, at the beginning of the second cen- 
tury, bids the Roman Christians "put up 
supplications to Christ on his behalf that 



The Christ of the Early Church. 133 

he might attain the distinction of martyr- 
dom." (Rom. c. 4). St. Polycarp, a few- 
years later, whilst bound to the stake to 
be consumed by fire, uttered this short but 
beautiful prayer preserved by the early 
Christians: "For all things, O God, do I 
praise and bless Thee, together with the 
Eternal and Heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy 
well-beloved Son, with Whom, to Thee and 
the Holy Ghost, be glory, both now and for- 
ever. Amen." (Mart. Polyc. c. 14.) After 
his death, some Jews spread the rumor that 
the Church at Smyrna of which he had been 
bishop, would abandon the worship of 
Christ and henceforth worship Polycarp in 
His stead. The Church authorities an- 
swered this charge in a circular letter, in 
which among other statements we read : 
"They know not that neither shall we ever 
be able to desert Christ, who suffered for 
the salvation of all who are saved in the 
whole world, nor yet to worship any other. 
For Him indeed, as being the Son of God, 
we do adore; but the martyrs, as disciples 
and imitators of the Lord, we worthily 
love by reason of their unsurpassed devo- 
tion to Him their own King and Teacher. 
God grant that we too may be fellow-par- 
takers and fellow-disciples with them." 
(Ibid. c. 17.) This almost reads as if it had 
been written by some Catholic of the six- 



134 What Think You of Christ? 

teenth or seventeenth century, who had 
set himself the task of refuting the Pro- 
testant charge of creature worship, so often 
urged against the Catholic practice of ven- 
erating the Saints. The letter draws a 
sharp line of demarcation between the trib- 
ute of honor accorded to the martyrs and 
the worship paid to the Redeemer; the one 
i$ simply an act of veneration perfectly 
compatible with created excellence, the 
other is an act of adoration which is due 
to God alone. 

This point stands out with special clear- 
ness in the works of Christian Apologists, 
who replied to the heathen charge of Athe- 
ism. When the Christians refused to wor- 
ship the false gods of the pagans, they were 
denounced as Atheists, who did not believe 
in the existence of higher beings. The 
Christian writers took up this charge and 
pointed to the fact that they worshiped the 
one true God, whose divine nature was 
common to the Father, to the Son, and to 
the Holy Spirit. Thus St. Justin, toward 
the middle of the second century, protests 
to the Emperor that the Christians wor- 
ship God alone, and in this worship the 
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost 
have an equal share. (Apol. I., cc. 6, 17.) 
Some fifty years later Tertullian grapples 
with the taunt that the Christians wor- 



The Christ of the Early Church. 135 

shiped a man, who had been condemned by 
the Jewish tribunals. He does not deny 
or palliate the charge, but justifies the 
Christian practice. Whatever Christ might 
be in the opinion of the pagan world, Chris- 
tians knew Him to be of one substance with 
the Father. (Apol. c. 21.) In another place 
he argues against mixed marriages, and the 
one reason which he advances against them 
is, that there could be no joint worship of 
the Redeemer. (Ad. Uxor, II., 6.) It was 
at that time that Origen, the greatest of 
early Christian writers, defended the wor- 
ship of Christ against Celsus, a scoffing 
pagan philosopher. Celsus contended that 
"the Christians had no right to denounce 
the polytheism of the pagan world, since 
their own worship of Christ was essentially 
polytheistic. It was absurd in the Chris- 
tians, he urged, to point at the heathen 
gods as idols, whilst they worshiped one 
who was in a much more wretched condi- 
tion than the idols, and indeed was not even 
an idol at all, since he was a mere corpse. 
(Contr. Cels. VII. 40.) "The Christians," 
he continued, "worshiped no God, no, not 
even a demon, but only a dead man." (Ibid. 
68.) "If they did not wish to worship the 
pagan gods, why should they not rather 
pay their devotions to some of their own 
prophets than to a man who had been cruci- 



136 What Think You of Christ? 

fled by the Jews?" (Ibid. 53.) In his reply, 
Origen freely admits the fact that the Chris- 
tians worshiped the crucified Christ. Nay, 
he not only admits that prayer to Christ 
was the universal practice of the Church, 
but he proceeds forthwith to justify it on 
the ground that Christ was God. "The 
gods of the pagans," he tells Celsus, "were 
unworthy of worship; the Jewish prophets 
had no claim to it ; on the other hand, Christ 
was worshiped not as a mere man, but as 
the Son of God, as God Himself." "If Cel- 
sus," he continues, "had understood the 
meaning of this, T and the Father are One', 
or what the Son of God says in His prayer, 
'As I and Thou are One/ he would never 
have imagined that we worship any but the 
God who is over all ; for Christ says, 'The 
Father is in Me and I in Him.' " (Ibid. 
VIII., 12,) 

A similar position is taken by Lactantius, 
Arnobius, and other Apologists, who in the 
first three centuries wrote against the pagan 
calumniators of Christian worship. They 
one and all, not only admit, that it was the 
universal practice of the Church to wor- 
ship Christ as God, but they justify this 
practice on the score that Christ had proved 
His right and title to divine worship, inas- 
much as He had demonstrated to evidence 
that He was God's own Son, equal to the 



The Christ of the Early Church. 137 

Father and consubstantial with Him in na- 
ture. Hence to say that in the first ages ot 
the Church Christ's divine personality was 
not a matter of faith is so directly opposed 
to the most certain testimony of history, 
that it is altogether unintelligible how any 
sincere and well read person can find the 
courage to make such a statement And 
yet this statement is made over and over 
again, and that by men who, at least in 
their own estimation, constitute the court 
of final appeal in all matters historical. It 
is, of course, not for me to judge whether 
or not thev are sincere in maintaining the 
position which they have so rashly assumed, 
but if they are, their reputation as histor- 
ians rests upon a very insecure foundation. 
\s a last witness to the faith of the harly 
Church in the divinity of Christ, we may con- 
sider that army of Christian martyrs, who 
preferred to be torn limb from limb rather 
than surrender the faith which the Church 
had bestowed upon them as their most pre- 
cious heritage. Their testimony is of ex- 
ceptional value, because at the moment of 
death, when eternity with its everlasting 
weal or woe steps into the foreground, man 
does not indulge in idle fancies or stub- 
bornly maintain a position which he knows 
to be insecure. Add to this that in the case 
of these martyrs, denial of faith in Christ 



138 What Think You of Christ? 

would have given them life and liberty and 
all sorts of earthly preferments whilst fidel- 
ity to that same faith not only meant death, 
but death under a form so terrible, that it 
almost freezes the blood in our veins simply 
to read of it in the records that describe 
their sufferings. Just imagine yourselves, 
if you can, in their place : stretched upon a 
rack, bedded upon a couch of fire, or nailed 
to the cross, with the alternative before you 
either to denounce your faith in Christ's 
divinity, or to endure the torture for hours 
and hours, until amid the jeers and jibes 
of a scoffing mob an ignominious death 
snatched you from the insatiable fury of 
your persecutors. Would you persevere in 
the confession of your faith, if that faith 
had not become your very life for time and 
for eternity? Yet vast multitudes of 
Christians gladly submitted to this bloody 
ordeal for no other reason than to remain 
faithful to Christ in death, whom they had 
learned to adore as their God during life. 
Men and women and children, rich and 
poor, learned and unlearned, bore this 
testimony to Christ without ever a thought 
of purchasing their life and liberty at the 
cost of their faith in His Godhead. The 
Church had taught them that Christ was 
True God ; they believed this teaching with 
their whole soul, and to keep their faith 



The Christ of the Early Church. 139 

intact, they gave up their bodies to tortures 
that beggar description. Theirs is a testi- 
mony that will live till the end of time ; 
"their voices reach us across the chasm of 
intervening centuries ; but time cannot im- 
pair the moral majesty, or weaken the 
accents of their strong and simple convic- 
tion." 

In order to realize what it meant to these 
martyrs thus to defend their faith in Christ, 
we must read the account of their suffer- 
ings as handed down by eye-witnesses, who 
recorded the terrible scenes at w T hich they 
themselves had been present. Among the 
many accounts that have thus been pre- 
served, the following, which critics ad- 
mit to be genuine, may serve as a sample. 
Euplius, a deacon of the Church at Catena 
had been brought before the Prefect 
Calvisianus on the charge of being a Chris- 
tian. The Prefect endeavored to win him 
over to paganism, but when he saw that 
all his entreaties and promises were in 
vain, he ordered the prisoner to be 
stretched on the rack. "And while being 
racked, Euplius said : I thank Thee, O 
Christ. Guard Thou me, who for Thee am 
suffering thus. The Prefect interrupted 
him, saying: Cease, Euplius, from this 
folly. Adore the gods, and thou shalt be 
set at liberty. Euplius answered : I adore 



140 What Think You of Christ? 

Christ ; I utterly hate the demons. Do 
what thou wilt: I am a Christian. Add 
yet other tortures: I am a Christian. 
After he had been tortured a long while, 
the executioners were bidden hold their 
hands : Then the Prefect said : Unhappy 
man, adore the gods. Pay worship to 
Mars, Apollo, and Aesculapius. Euplius 
replied : I worship the Father and the Son 
and the Holy Ghost. I adore the Holy 
Trinity, beside Whom there is no God. 
Perish the gods who did not make heaven 
and earth, and all that is in them. I am a 
Christian. The Prefect again said: Offer 
sacrifice, if thou wouldst be set at liberty. 
But Euplius answered : I sacrifice myself 
only to Christ my God : more than this I 
cannot do. Thy efforts are to no purpose ; 
I am a Christian. Then orders were given 
that he should be tortured again ; and 
whilst every bone was wrenched from its 
socket, he cried out : Thanks to Thee, O 
Christ. Help me, O Christ. For Thee do 
I suffer thus O Christ. When finally all 
his strength had left him and his voice was 
gone, he still repeated these same exclama- 
tions with his lips only." (Ruinart, Acta 
Mart. p. 439). 

Thus died Euplius, confessing his faith 
in Christ's divinity with his last breath; 



The Christ of the Early Church. 141 

and thus died not hundreds and thousands, 
but millions. They all died bearing wit- 
ness to Christ the Son of God, as He Him- 
self had foretold when He said to His 
disciples : Behold I send you as sheep 
among wolves. . . .For they will deliver you 
up in councils, and they will scourge you 
in their synagogues. And you will be 
brought before governors, and before kings 
for my sake, for a testimony to them and 
to the Gentiles. " (Matt. X., 16-18.) 

With this, I think we may safely close 
our inquiry into the faith of the Church 
during the first three centuries of her 
existence. That faith stands out as clearly 
and as well attested as any other fact of 
history. The open profession of belief 
in Christ's Godhead which the Church 
demanded from all who wished to 
join her communion ; the worship which 
she required all her children to pay to 
Christ; the unhesitating decision with 
which she opposed heretics ; the unanimous 
teaching of her most representative men ; 
the dying confessions of her countless 
martyrs — all without exception testify that 
she believed and taught that Christ was 
True God. If this testimony does not give 
US certainty, then there is no certainty in 
history; if this testimony is false, then all 
history is a lie. 



142 



Christ the Light of the World. 

In the first chapter of this booklet I 
made the statement that if the greater part 
of the civilized world is Christian to-day, it 
is because the Christ, who was preached by 
the Apostles and their successors, presented 
Himself to the acceptance of all, not as a 
mere man, but as the One True God, be- 
fore whom every knee must bend in 
humble adoration. The beauty of His 
human character won men's love, but it 
was only the majesty of His Godhead that 
gained their submission. This statement is, 
as a matter of course, challenged by 
Rationalists and Modernists, who endeavor 
to show that Christ's influence upon the 
world was entirely owing to the sublimity 
of His human character. Whatever refor- 
mation He effected, they contend, must in 
the last instance be ascribed to the force 
of His example, which gave to His ethical 
teaching an efficacy that but few could 
withstand. To one who fully understands 
what the world owes to Christ, this view 
presents indeed insuperable difficulties, but 
these men rarely scruple to set aside a 
difficulty, if it is found to imperil their pet 
theories. In the present instance it is 



Christ the Light of the World. 143 

quite usual to emphasize beyond measure 
all that was good in the pagan world, and 
to minimize whatever tells distinctly in 
favor of Christianity. This is evidently not 
a fair method of procedure, but it answers 
the purpose admirably, and therefore it is 
made to do service on every possible oc- 
casion. I do not say that all Rationalists 
and Modernists stoop to such methods ; 
but many of them do, and their number is 
increasing in the same ratio as their 
position is becoming more untenable. 

In view of this, I think it quite appro- 
priate to conclude the present treatise, 
which from first to- last deals with the 
divinity of Christ, by presenting to you an 
historical appreciation of the work which 
Christ has accomplished in the reformation 
of the w r orld. My purpose in this is not 
precisely to prove that Christ was God, for 
that has been proved already in the preced- 
ing chapters, but rather to point out that 
this work of reformation was in itself truly 
divine, and that therefore it cannot be at- 
tributed to a merely human agency. If 
from other sources we have reason to be- 
lieve that Christ was truly a divine person, 
then the reformation which He inaugurated 
can only confirm us in that belief; al- 
though taken by itself some might not con- 
sider it decisive. In the present (lis- 



144 What Thtxk You of Chjust? 

cussion, therefore, we shall try to deter- 
mine what Christ has accomplished and 
what bearing His work has upon His 
claim that He was God. For cleans 
sake, we shall pursue oar inquiries along 
three distinct lines, taking as their points 
:: iecarturr :hr s:.a.:u5 :: ::.: individual. 
the constitntion of the family, and the con- 
dition of society. For under these three 
L5:t::5 ;r~::i:=.lly _di "/h:le rr.iral v:rl: 
:s ::r.:=.:r.ti. 

First then as regards the status of the 
individual. What was in pre-Christian 
times the personal condition of men and 
women in reference to the most essential 
rights of human beings? What was the 
individual's recognized worth and value 
simply as a man? It may sound like ex- 
aggeration, yet it is a fact corroborated by 
the concordant testimony of all ancient 
history, that the individual as such had 
practically no legal existence. With the 
exception of that one small nation, over 
which God Himself ruled as sovereign 
Lord, the various peoples of the earth had 
been reduced to a condition of such abso- 
lute slavery that man as man was simply 
a nonentity. By far the greater part of 
manl-iin: live: ir. : ::e: in the state :: bond- 
age. Nor was this the case only among 
Oriental nations, where royal despotism 



Christ the Light of the World. 145 

was carried to such lengths that practically 
every subject was a slave, but even among 
the freedom loving peoples of the West, 
where Greece and Rome brought pagan 
civilization to its greatest perfection. To 
many an admirer of the past, Athens stands 
for all that is beautiful, refined, noble and 
patriotic, yet Thucydides tells us that of 
its sixty thousand inhabitants, which was 
the highest number reached in his day, over 
forty thousand were slaves. In Rome, the 
greatest military power which the ancient 
world had ever seen, conditions were in 
this respect much worse. In fact, slaves 
were there so numerous that the govern- 
ment was in constant fear lest they should 
find out their number and in consequence 
rise in open rebellion against the state. 
It was worse still in the conquered 
provinces. Thus of Seneca, who is com- 
monly pointed to as a model pagan gentle- 
man, it is related that he had on his various 
provincial estates as many as eighty 
thousand slaves. Other Roman Patricians 
followed his example, and as a result 
slavery was necessarily for the many, free- 
dom for the few. 

Nor must it be supposed that slavery 
meant only the loss of personal freedom; 
it implied the forfeiture of all that dis- 
tinguishes man from brute creation. In 



a-. 



:: — 



Christ the Light of the World. 147 

torians have recorded abuses so shocking, 
that for the honor of humanity they should 
have buried them in eternal silence. I 
would not dare even to refer to the moral 
turpitude that marked the relations of 
masters and slaves both in the East and in 
the West. Suffice it to call attention to 
the physical sufferings which these un- 
fortunates were made to endure on all 
possible occasions. A thoughtless word, an 
involuntary movement whilst in attendance 
on master or mistress, or even the failure 
to accomplish what lay beyond human 
strength, was quite sufficient to bring upon 
them bodily punishment that would have 
been brutal cruelty if inflicted upon the 
worst criminals. Moreover on the slightest 
provocation they were slaughtered like 
cattle. Vedius Pollio has put it on record 
that a certain slave, who by accident had 
broken a glass, was by his master cut up 
into small pieces, and these were thrown 
to the fishes to fatten them for that same 
master's table. Thucydides relates that the 
Spartans, at a time of political trouble, 
gathered together their slaves like a herd 
of sheep and butchered them in cold blood. 
In Rome, whenever a master was assassin- 
ated, all his slaves were put to death, 
without any regard for age or sex or inno- 
cence. Thus, as Tacitus states in his 



148 What Thixk You of Christ? 

Annals, when the Prefect Pedanius Secun- 
dus was killed by one of his slaves, four 
hundred innocent men and women were 
led to the slaughter. And this was not the 
work of popular fury, but it was solemnly 
decreed by grave senators, who defended 
their course of action on the plea that it 
was an ancient custom, and seemed neces- 
sarv for the safetv of the state. (Ann. I. 
XIV, 43) 

Xor did persons of higher ranks, who 
gloried in the title of free men. have any 
personal rights that need be respected by 
those who were in authority. It was a 
time when might was right, and when the 
weak were entirely at the mercy of the 
strong. Private individuals were simply so 
many units in the general aggregate called 
the state. They had recognized worth and 
value only in so far as they were of service 
to the commonwealth. The state was not 
intended for the good of the citizens, but 
the citizens for the good of the state. It 
is largely to this perverted notion of state 
omnipotence and state absolutism, that 
must be attributed the almost universal 
practice of infanticide, as defended and 
advocated by the greatest philosophers of 
pagan antiquity. Whenever a child was 
born deformed, or of a weakly constitu- 
tion, he might simply be thrown into the 



Christ the Light of the World. 149 

ditch to perish. He was a human being, 
but what of that? He would be useless to 
the state, and therefore he had no right to 
life. In Rome this practice was carried to 
such lengths that it depended absolutely on 
the father whether his child should live or 
die. As soon as a babe w r as born, it was 
placed at its father's feet ; if he took it up, 
it was allowed to live ; if he turned away 
from it, it was cast to the dogs. To us it 
seems incredible that such an atrocious 
practice should ever have obtained the 
sanction of the law, yet the ancients looked 
upon it as perfectly appropriate, because to 
them the individual was nothing, the state 
was evervthing. (Cf. Plato, Rep. V. 
Aristotle. Polit. VII, 16.) 

As the condition of the individual was 
thus most deplorable in the pagan world, 
so also was that of the family. Family 
life as we understand it, in the sense, 
namely, that every member of the family 
has his or her well-defined and inalienable 
rights, had practically no existence in 
pagan antiquity. There were no doubt 
many happy homes, as there will always 
be, even under the worst social conditions, 
but they were only such by way of 
gratuitous concessions on the part of the 
husband, and not in consequence of recog- 
nized rights as vested in wife and child. 



150 What Think You of Christ? 

In the vast majority of countries wife and 
child had no legal rights; they were abso- 
lutely in the power of the head of the 
family. They were his possessions, his 
chattels, which he could use or abuse ac- 
cording to his whims. The wife's relations 
might indeed interfere in her behalf, but if 
they did so, they must take the law into 
their own hands and abide by the conse- 
quences. Nor was this the case only in 
the Orient, where woman has always been 
either a slave or a plaything, but even in 
Western lands, where as a general rule 
there was in force a somewhat more equit- 
able distribution of personal rights and 
privileges. Thus among the Romans, as 
already stated, when a child was born, 
even if it were strong and well formed, it 
depended upon the father whether it should 
live or die. When the wife committed a 
fault, her husband was free to punish her 
according to his own discretion, and if he 
thought fit to put her to death, even 
though the fault committed was not of a 
serious nature, he was legally responsible 
to no one. In him the duties of husband 
and father had disappeared in his rights as 
lord and master. 

Nor was this the worst phase of 
family life as known to the pagan world. 
There was another aspect which cast upon 



Christ the Light of the World. 151 

the pagan home a much more lurid light. 
If the husband was so inclined, he could 
have a plurality of wives, and so convert 
his home into a harem. Or if he found it 
more to his taste, he might at any time 
divorce his lawful wife, send her back to 
her family, and forthwith enter upon a new 
matrimonial alliance. Even Cicero, who 
was in his time the foremost man in Rome, 
did not blush to put away the companion of 
his youth and give her place to another 
woman of whom he had become enamoured. 
Nor was this merely a de facto condition 
of things — an evil that was tolerated under 
stress of adverse circumstances ; it was the 
direct and necessary result of the view 
which the pagan world took of woman as 
such. Even among the Greeks, the most 
refined nation of pagan antiquity, woman 
was considered to be of a nature essentially 
lower than man, and therefore incapable of 
possessing independent rights. It was but 
the universally accepted view which the 
poet expressed when he wrote : "The gods 
gave strength to the lion, wings to the 
bird, understanding to man, and, as they 
had nothing else left for woman, they gave 
her beauty" — no intellect, no will, no virtue ; 
but a certain exterior power to please, 
which made her the plaything of man's 
passions. 



152 What Think You of Christ? 

From this shocking picture of pagan dis- 
orders, as found in the life of the individual 
and of the family, we may readily infer 
what must have been the normal condition 
of society in the ancient world. For 
society is made up of families and indi- 
viduals, and as the component parts are, 
such also must be the general aggregate. 
As the individual was wholly absorbed by 
the state, there was first of all no room 
for the spirit of brotherhood, which tended 
to unite the different nations and peoples 
of the great human family in the bonds of 
mutual love and esteem. "Among the 
Greeks, the Greeks were everything; 
strangers, barbarians, were nothing." In 
Rome, the title of Roman citizen made the 
man ; he who wanted it was nothing. As a 
result states were turned against states, 
tribes against tribes, and war and blood- 
shed, pillage and plunder, marked the 
normal condition of the pagan world. The 
"Vae victis" — woe to the vanquished — as 
used by ancient historians has a terrible 
significance to one who cons their pages. 
Add to this the fact that even among 
people of the same nations there was little 
or no fellow feeling, which might have 
tended to alleviate the manifold ills of life. 
Poverty and sufferings, so far from excit- 
ing compassion, were almost universally 



Christ the Light of the World. 153 

looked upon as a sign of divine reprobation. 
What must life have meant in those days 
of brass, when might was right, when the 
poor were considered as accursed of the 
gods, when the crippled and infirm found 
solace only in death ! What is the history 
of those times but a record of the triumphs 
of brute force over weakness, of vice over 
virtue? What is it but the prolonged echo 
of the slave's dying groan? 

Worse still were the moral conditions of 
society, even among nations the most 
cultured and refined. Not only were the 
private lives of all classes of people marked 
by the most degrading moral corruption, 
but public morality had sunk to so low an 
ebb that vice paraded the streets unblush- 
ingly in open day. Nay, moral foulness 
had its legal place even in temples of 
worship, and unnameable turpitude boasted 
of its gods and goddesses as special pro- 
tectors. In spite of recent efiforts to bring 
into prominence the good features of 
paganism, the fact of pagan corruption in 
every walk of life is written in characters 
so large and conspicuous upon the pages 
of history that he who runs may read. All 
flesh had indeed corrupted its way, and the 
ways of men were evil from their youth. 
Minds and hearts had grown callous 
through the free indulgence of animal 



154 What Think You of Christ? 

passion, so much so that religious worship 
itself found expression in carnal excesses. 

C:\ Doellinger. Tew and Gentile.) 
What a fearful record the human race, 
gone astray from its God, established for 
itself in those days of darkness. Sin! sin! 
rrywhere the ghastly spectacle of sin! 
And do you think that there was any power 
on earth that could lift fallen humanity 
from this degradation, and make of it a 
race of men and women who would show 
in their even' action that they were made 
to the image and likeness of the all-holy, 
all-loving, all-pure God? The pagans them- 
selves knew better, "Only a God" said 
Plato, "can set the world aright. 7 ' Only a 
God, who has power to take away men's 
heart of stone and give them a heart of 
flesh. Only a God. who can take men's 
thoughts and aspirations, purify and spirit- 
ualize them and link them to the throne 
of their Creator. Only a God, who in the 
excess of His love and mercy deigns to 
make sin-stained human nature His own, 
and robed in that nature walks before His 
adopted brethren in the way of virtue and 
holiness, not merely cheering them on by 
His loving example, but also upholding 
them in their trials and difficulties by that 
same hand of almighty power, which in the 
beginning drew heaven and earth and all 



Christ the Light of the World. 155 

that is in them out of nothingness. He 
alone can restore all things, and thus renew 
the face of the earth. 

And has He done it? History tells its 
own story — a story that no one can fail 
to understand, if he but read it with a heart 
and mind that is open to the truth. From 
the manger in the stable at Bethlehem 
there has shone forth a light, whose bright- 
ness shall not fail till the end of time : — 
and that light is Jesus of Nazareth, "the 
Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth, and of whose fullness we all have 
received, grace for grace. " Himself the 
Word, who in the beginning was with God, 
and who was God, He in time united hu- 
man nature to Himself in personal union, 
and thereby impressed upon it a dignity 
which no external circumstances can take 
away. Born in poverty and lowliest ab- 
jection, He brushed aside all vain distinc- 
tion arising from wealth and position and 
thus made the slave in his bonds the peer 
of the king upon his throne. Bodily ad- 
vantages He accounted as nothing, but He set 
forth in bold relief the sublime dignity of 
man's immortal soul, and as this soul is the 
same in the lowest as in the highest, He 
thereby secured the individual in the en- 
joyment of personal rights which must be 
respected by all. Claiming each single 



156 What Think You of Christ? 

human being as His own flesh and blood, 
He regarded what was done to the least 
of them as done to Himself. Hence also 
He said to His Apostles on the eve of His 
death: "The kings of the Gentiles lord it 
over them; and they that have power over 
them, are called beneficent. But you not 
so; but he that is greater among you, let 
him become as the younger; and he that is 
the leader, as he that serveth" (Luke, 
XXII, 25, 26). 

It was this emphasis placed upon the in- 
alienable rights of man as man, that acted 
in the first instance as a regenerating 
principle, whereby society was lifted from 
the depths of degradation to which it had 
sunk in pagan times. The moment it be- 
came a recognized fact that all men, with- 
out exception, were the children of God, 
brethren of Christ, and heirs of heaven, 
the ancient system of slavery could no 
longer be maintained. Although external 
circumstances made the immediate aboli- 
tion of servitude impossible, yet such 
radical changes were introduced that the 
slave was henceforth regarded as a servant, 
possessed of well-defined rights, which his 
master was bound to respect. The author- 
ity of the master was no longer an absolute 
personal prerogative, but the deputed au- 
thority of God for the use of which a strict 



Christ the Light of the World. 157 

account was to be given to an all-seeing 
judge. This point was brought out with 
special clearness by the great Apostle of 
the Gentiles, who continued the work in- 
augurated by Christ. He indeed exhorted 
slaves to obey their masters, but he in- 
sisted that this obedience was to be yielded 
for God's sake, not for man's. And to em- 
phasize the essential equality of master and 
slave, he immediately added: "And you, 
masters do the same thing to them, for- 
bearing threatenings, knowing that the 
Lord both of them and you is in heaven, 
and there is no respect of persons with 
Him" (Eph. VI, 5, 6). 

Xor did this spirit of Christ's divine 
charity, which at first tended to ameliorate 
the hard lot of His enslaved brethren, fail 
to secure for them in due time complete 
emancipation. Even from the first moment 
of her existence, the Church of Christ, em- 
bodying both His spirit and His means of 
grace, labored unremittingly in behalf of 
those whom adverse circumstances had re- 
duced to the condition of servitude. She 
herself set the example of manumission, 
that is, of liberating such slaves as for one 
reason or another had come into her power. 
And as she did so did many of her faithful 
children, so that before long every solemn 
festival was marked by the enfranchise- 



158 What Think You of Christ? 

ment of hundreds of slaves, who hence- 
forth enjoyed .all the rights of free men. 
Again, in cases where the Church could 
not obtain freedom for slaves, she took 
them under. her special protection, decree- 
ing the severest penalties against masters 
who had recourse to mutilation or other 
modes of punishment prohibited by the 
laws of the Christian commonwealth. It 
required centuries of patient endeavor be- 
fore the evil could be completely eradicated, 
yet the good work went steadily on ever 
pushed forward by the spirit of Christ, who 
died for the bond as well as for the free. If 
in our own day slavery has practically ceased 
to exist, it is because the spirit of Christ, 
enlightening men's minds .and softening 
men's hearts, has finally triumphed. The 
principle of equality and brotherhood em- 
phasized by the Saviour in all His teach- 
ing, and rendered fruitful through His di- 
vine influence upon men's souls, has at 
last found a universal though tardy recog- 
nition. 

To the same divine influence must be 
attributed the respect for human life, in all 
its various phases, which distinguishes 
Christian society from that of the pagan 
world. Wherever minds and hearts are 
opened to Christ's message of truth and 
love, there human life is sacred; there it is 



Christ the Light of the World. 159 

safeguarded with loving care no matter 
what burden its conservation may impose 
upon individuals or upon society. To 
destroy it by a willful act, or to 
cause its loss by culpable negligence, 
constitutes murder, which, as every Chris- 
tian knows and believes, cries to heaven 
for vengeance. Nay, not only is human 
life thus safeguarded, but hundreds and 
thousands of Christ's followers, ani- 
mated by His spirit of love and mercy, 
consecrate themselves and all they have to 
the relief of the poor and sick and aban- 
doned, accounting it a rare happiness to be 
allowed to ameliorate by their own suffer- 
ings the hard lot of their unfortunate 
brethren. How the so-called wise men of 
old would have marveled had they been 
able to witness the various works of charity 
carried on in the Christian world ! They 
would have thought it all a poetic dream, 
of which even their gods could not have 
effected the realization. Yet it was realized, 
and realized by the silent but all-powerful 
influence of the spirit of Christ who in very 
truth is God. 

Equally striking and thorough was the- 
reformation effected by Christ in regard to 
the family. By restating the original doc- 
trine of marriage, one with one and for- 
ever, and then raising the natural contract' 



160 What Think You of Christ? 

to the dignity of a sacrament, He stem* 
med the awful stream of corruption and 
tyranny which had completely swept 
away the home from pagan lands. He 
placed woman on a footing of essential 
equality with man, so that husband and 
wife were to be regarded, not as two, but as 
one flesh. Henceforth the wife was to be 
her husband's companion, not his slave; 
she was to be the mother of his children, 
not the instrument of his lust. She was to 
dwell without a rival in her own home; be 
the sole object of the love and affections 
of her husband, and have the most solemn 
and sacred assurance of his fidelity in pros- 
perity and misfortune, in health and in sick- 
ness, even until their parting in death. 

This high ideal of Christian marriage, so 
solemnly proposed to the astonished world 
by the Saviour of mankind, has found its 
realization among all peoples who have ac- 
cepted Christ as their Redeemer and their 
God. The Apostles and disciples, whom 
Christ commissioned and empowered to 
carry on His divine work of reform, im- 
pressed upon their converts the necessity 
of modeling their homes upon that of the 
God-man, where love and purity and rever- 
ence, dwelt as the guardian angels of the 
hearthstone. They told the Christian hus- 
band that he must love his wife even as 



Christ the Light of the World. 161 

Christ loved His Church, and the Chris- 
tian wife that she must be subject to her 
husband, as the Church also is subject to 
Christ. St. Paul put this very strikingly 
in his Epistle to the Ephesians, where he 
says : "Husbands, love your wives, as 
Christ also loved the Church, and delivered 
Himself up for it. . . .So also ought men to 
love their wives as their own bodies. He 
that loveth his wife, loveth himself. For 
no man ever hated his own flesh ; but nour- 
isheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth 
the church, because we are members of his 
body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For 
this cause shall a man leave his father and 
mother, and shall cleave to his wife and 
they shall be two in one flesh. This is a 
great sacrament ; but I speak in Christ and 
in the Church. " (V. 25-32.) 

In keeping with this doctrine, and upheld 
in her struggles by Christ's never failing 
assistance, the Church ever watched with 
loving care over all that concerned the wel- 
fare of the family. She surrounded the 
contracting of the marriage-bond with the 
most impressive religious ceremonies, so 
that bride and bridegroom might carry 
home with them the firm conviction that 
their union was holy even as the union of 
Christ with His Church. She placed her 
sacred seal upon the union thus effected, 



H 



162 What Think You of Christ? 

and that seal no power on earth could 
break. Kings and potentates, in the pride 
of their power, demanded at times conces- 
sions to human weakness, yet her answer 
ever was : Non possumus — we cannot : — 
what God hath joined together, let no man 
put asunder. She pointed to the little 
home at Nazareth, the home of the God- 
Man, and told her children to model their 
homes upon that divine pattern. It was 
through her influence, directed and made 
effective by the presence of her divine 
Founder, that Christian marriage remained 
what Christ had made it:— a holy and in- 
dissoluble union, the source of peace and 
happiness, the heaven-blessed nursery of 
men and women whose lives of purity and 
holiness would have been to the ancient 
world a standing miracle. 

What Christ thus effected in behalf of 
the individual and the family, He ex- 
tended to human society in all its various 
relations and aspects. By making human 
nature His own, He broke down the bar- 
riers which had till then divided nation 
from nation, and class from class : He im- 
planted in the human heart the seeds of 
universal charity, and thus made the whole 
world feel akin. The prophet had an- 
nounced Him as the Prince of Peace, and 
peace He brought to all, such as the world 



Christ the Light of the World. 163 

cannot give. In this spirit the Apostle of 
the Gentiles wrote to his converts from 
Paganism : "There is neither Jew nor 
Greek ; there is neither bond nor free. For 
you are all children of God by faith in 
Jesus Christ." A new commandment was 
given to the world, the commandment of 
brotherly love ; and this, together with the 
love of God, comprised the whole law. 
Christ did not discourage in His followers 
love of country, and patriotic devotion to 
the land of their birth ; but this love and 
devotion He subordinated to the spirit of 
universal brotherhood, which made the 
broad earth the common country of all. 

This same spirit brought together the 
different classes of society, and made the 
interests of one the interests of all. "See 
how they love one another !" said the 
pagans of old, when they saw the Chris- 
tians so perfectly united that they seemed 
to have but one heart and one soul. Again 
with Christ's blessing upon the poor, the 
meek and the clean of heart, social inter- 
course was placed upon the solid basis of 
supernatural motives, and thus of its very 
nature tended to peace and concord, and to 
the furtherance of public morality. The 
social conscience was awakened, and 
branded as heinous crimes what the pagan 
world had regarded as a matter of indiffer- 



■■■■ 



164 What Think You of Christ? 

ence. Human passions indeed remained 
what they had ever been, and they all too 
often broke out into open rebellion ; yet 
the gentle and pure spirit of Christ never 
failed to reassert its influence and enkindle 
afresh in the hearts of men and women the 
love of Christian virtue. 

A still more special remedy did Christ 
apply to the fearful corruption of morals 
which so disgraced the ancient world. In 
pagan times men and women Vvere impure, 
not simply because their passions were 
strong, but because they had ceased to love 
purity; they had flung aside this fairest 
of jewels as a thing without value. Christ 
took that discarded jewel, placed it as the 
brightest gem in the crown of His own 
sweet mother, and so made it an object 
of love and admiration. It was only when 
this virtue received its consecration in the 
virgin mother of God, that men and 
women opened their eyes to its surpassing 
beauty. It is to her example and the all- 
powerful grace of Christ that we owe 
those fair flowers of Christian purity — a 
St. Agnes, a St. Aloysius, and countless 
others, whose names shine like gems upon 
every page of modern history. Christ 
made her the Queen of virgins and around 
her regal throne He has gathered a count- 
less host of youths and maidens, who have 



Christ the Light of the World. 165 

gladly sacrificed all that a flattering world 
could' offer to wealth and wit and beauty, 
in order to purchase this pearl of great 
price. As beheld in the soft radiance shed 
upon it by the virgin mother of Christ, 
this fairest of virtues has again become an 
object of love to men and women who had 
almost forgotten its meaning. Even 
where the courage to practice purity is 
wanting, the love of it still lingers, and 
this love is the special gift of the God- 
Man, made more beautiful and fair as pre- 
sented to us by His own sweet mother. 

Thus in every respect has Christ renewed 
the face of the earth. As at the beginning 
of time, the Spirit of God moved over the 
waters and called forth the light and life 
of the new-made world, so did the Spirit 
of Christ move over the waters of pagan 
corruption and imparted to the world 
grown old in sin new light and life, which 
shall not wholly fail until the end of time. 
It is true, indeed, that there is much in 
the Christian world to-day that is evil : — 
the poor are the slaves of the rich, homes 
are broken up by our divorce courts, pri- 
vate and public morality has again sunk 
to a low ebb ; but that is because men and 
women, fathers and mothers, have of their 
own free choice and against their better 
judgment gone astray from Christ. Christ 



166 What Think You of Christ? 

had power to call a dead world into life, 
and He has power to sustain that life 
which He has once given; but He will not 
do so when the men refuse to make use of 
the means which he has placed at their 
disposal. When men and women make of 
marriage "a merely worldly thing," how 
can they expect the blessing of Christ upon 
their wedded life? When fathers and 
mothers allow their children to grow up 
without religion, how can they expect the 
blessing of Christ upon their families? 
When rich and poor repudiate the price of 
their redemption and seek their happiness 
in the things of sense, how can they expect 
the blessing of Christ upon society. Christ 
is as powerful now as He was in the days 
of old, but none can profit by His power 
except they be men of good will. He has 
indeed come to save what was lost, but 
when men refuse to be saved, they fru- 
strate His beneficent designs, and they 
perish, not on account of Christ's weak- 
ness, but through their own perversity. 

Hence if we take facts as they are, and 
not such as they are represented to be in 
order to fit a theory, we may well say that 
Christ has wrought a truly divine reforma- 
tion. He has proved himself to be in very 
truth the "light of the world". He rose 
as a star out of Jacob, and poured out the 



Christ the Light of the World. 167 

fullness of His light upon the nations that 
dwelt in darkness and in the region of the 
shadow of death. The world has received 
of His light, and has remained dark only 
where it has wilfully shut out its bright- 
ness, although that brightness could not 
be shut out completely. Christ is the cen- 
tral figure of the world's history. The 
four thousand years of hope which pre- 
ceded His coming found in Him their ful- 
fillment ; the centuries that have passed 
since His humble birth in the stable of 
Bethlehem drew from Him their life and 
inspiration. For Him the ancient world 
longed and yearned as its only hope ; to 
Him the modern world must ever look 
back as the source of all its blessings. 
With Christ the God-Man, as the Redeemer 
of a fallen race, the world's history has a 
meaning; without Him, or without His 
divine mission as Saviour of mankind, that 
same history is an unintelligible riddle. 
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the be- 
ginning and the end of man's hopes and 
joys for time and for eternity. 



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Treatment Date: July 2005 

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A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 



